Courier reports, 'Work to start at Ness Castle housing development'

The Courier article begins:

WORK will begin shortly on one of Inverness’s largest private housing developments after the Scottish Government gave it a £1.9 million "kick start".

The scheme to build nearly 1000 homes and a primary school within the former estate of Ness Castle, off Dores Road, stalled despite receiving planning consent in 2009 because banks were unwilling to back it.

But it has now become one of the first, and largest, beneficiaries of Holyrood’s new Housebuilding Infrastructure Loans Fund, receiving the money towards the £3.98 million cost of building a new access road and a roundabout...

Rest of article can be found here

In a related item here on the Scottish Government web site dated 11 07 2012 Housing Minister Keith Brown is quoted as saying:

“The current tough financial climate, exacerbated by Westminster's short-sighted and economically damaging capital spending cuts, has made it hard for companies to take forward major housing developments across Scotland.

"These first loans that I have announced today will help companies speed up their plans to build the roads or lay the pipes and cables that mean housing developments can proceed.

"We have revised the criteria for the next round of funding, untying the red tape so that more companies can come forward with their infrastructure proposals.”

This Government web site item also includes a link

Detailed guidance on how to apply to the second phase of the fund

Some insight into the issues faced by the development interest at Ness Castle can be found in the submission made on their behalf to the HwLDP Main Issues Report back in late 2009

....By way of background, the council resolved to grant planning permission in 'principle' for residential development on the Trustees landholding at Torbreck, Ness Castle earlier this year subject to the conclusion of a Section 75 Agreement in relation to inter alia developer contributions and agreement on the accompanying planning conditions (Reference 04/00585/OUTIN)

...this representation focuses on those issues still to be finalised with the council in relation to my client's land interests, namely affordable housing and developer contributions.

There then follows more detailed discussion of the Client's issues after which it is emphasised, in the section that covers developer contributions, that:

...developers cannot be expected to make good existing deficiencies within both the immediate and wider area or in relation to that which goes beyond their own specific proposals.

The full submission can be found at this link here