| Cala Homes, which had originally planned to make a start on the site near Liff village in 2008, has told the Tele it has now withdrawn from a development that had promised to deliver as many as 1500 homes.
The company, along with Bett Homes, was supposed to be a major part of a housing project that had the full support of Dundee City Council planners who are keen to see high council tax-banded homes built within the city boundaries.
Bett Homes, formerly Gladedale, has confirmed it is eager to push ahead, but it now seems likely any development at the site will be much reduced.
Like Cala, Bett has fallen behind in its timescale. Just over a year ago the company said that it expected to have homes for sale on the site in 2009.
At that stage, Cala was proposing an initial development of 60 homes, and Bett Homes another 230. Together, they had been expected to add hundreds more in the coming years.
But the plans of both companies have been badly rocked by the recession, that hit just around the time they were due to move on site.
House-builders across the country have had to rethink their commitments as access to funding became more difficult and sales of new homes slowed to a trickle in some areas.
Cala would only say, “We are no longer interested in the Western Gateway development.”
Bett Homes said, “We remain committed to bringing quality homes to South Gray Village, Western Gateway, and we are currently working alongside the council to progress this project.”
It is not clear which other developers, if any, have an interest in building houses on land south of Liff.
Although the UK has now officially crawled out of recession and the house-building market is showing tentative signs of recovery, many developers have shown a reluctance to push ahead with speculative developments.
Another major barrier is the requirement by developers to carry out costly improvements to the Swallow Hotel roundabout to cope with the extra traffic generated by the new homes.
The city council has agreed to allow 270 homes without junction improvements, but anything above this figure will require substantial work, likely to cost millions of pounds.
Bett Homes, then trading as Gladedale, closed its Dundee office in September 2008, with the loss of 30 jobs, blaming a “lack of mortgage availability and consumer confidence”.
Since then, Perth and Kinross Council has also granted planning permission for 240 houses in the Carse village of Errol.
However, Cala said it has started work on a site in the former grounds of Liff Hospital that will lead to 32 new upmarket homes being built.
The woodland site has been selected for the launch of Cala’s new Signature Collection — a new house design.
The first plot was reserved by a house-hunter on February 7, just two days after the development was released for sale.
The 32 four- and five-bedroom homes are the latest phase of Cala’s Sycamores development at the hospital site. The first phase of four- and five-bedroom homes sold out at the beginning of last year. Cala said the new houses will be priced from £280,000. |
