The go-ahead has been given to sell the site of a former middle school in Sandown so houses can be built, including more than 30 affordable ones.
A decision was made on Wednesday (12th October) by Councillor Ian Stephens, the Isle of Wight Council’s new cabinet member for finance and housing, to sell the land of the former Sandham Middle School.
The authority will accept the offer from developer, National Pride, which was the highest bidder for the land and has proposed to build 74 houses, subject to planning permission.
How much the site is being sold for is currently confidential, as the council says it is commercially sensitive.
Money from the sale will be reinvested into nearby sports or education facilities in projects agreed by the Department for Education. The Government’s education body also has to agree to the site’s sale, if the future of the land is not for educational purposes.
It had also been used for a time by Sandown Bay Academy after the middle school closed.
According to the council’s decision sheet, the benefits from the sale, the authority believes, will include much-needed housing and a considerable investment in the Island’s school estate.
To secure the site, National Pride told the council it would build 74 houses, 37 of them being affordable.
A decision was made on Wednesday (12th October) by Councillor Ian Stephens, to increase the suffering of islanders by adding to the road congestion, adding to the pressures on landfill, refuse collection, adding to the CO2 produced by more cars, adding to the queues at the hospital, doctors, dentists and other services, as well as raking in more money for his and other councillors salaries and meeting fees by approving this stupid housing idea.
the council clearly don’t care about the quality of life for islanders, as if they did, then they would ban all house building, as there is no spare capacity in the existing infrastructure.
what about the biosphere status, what about returning that site to nature.
Please stop this crap on co2 the bloody trees need it to live to give us oxygen..yes the roads cant handel it the island is old and worn out..
there is plenty of CO2 in the atmosphere already – no more need be added by car exhaust and increases in population
These people exist whether that’s here or not, C02 comment is completely pointless.
“the council clearly don’t care about the quality of life for ELDERLY OVERNERS”.
There. Fixed that for you.
There is a massive shortage of homes that are affordable for young, working, Islanders.
The problem isn’t in building affordable housing on brownfield sites like this.
The problem is building expensive homes for incoming well-off retirees and 2nd homers on rural greenfield sites.
no, it is an over population problem – less people, would mean more houses available for islanders
get rid of the benefit sponging moves from other parts of the uk to the island, get rid of the sponging dinghy leeches, get rid of airbnb, get rid of 2nd homes and voila – plenty of new housing for islanders, without ruining the environment further.
The Island population of those under 65 has decreased over the last 10 years, while the number of those 65 and over has increased enormously, as has the Island population as a whole.
These are facts, verifiable facts. Whether you like them or not.
The overpopulation of the Isle of Wight is, exclusively, old people, the majority of whom are overner retirees.
Guessing that is exactly what you are.
And IF you ask or even LISTEN to WHY many of these older people have moved to the Isle of Wight the answer, albeit in hushed tones thanks to curtailment of freedom of speech will indicate the massive arrival of newcomers into villages, towns and Cities where many of these retirees have come from, making ‘them’ feel strangers and outsiders in places they had lived often for all their lives.
NO MP, or figure of authority or stats, or data will show this, but just subtly ASK and LISTEN
What a load of rubbish. Also TRY not to make some of your WORDS look BIG by thinking you come ACROSS intelligent by USING CAPS LOCK. Numpty.
Bring it on, the extra work is good for tradesmen
like myself.
England is grotesquely overpopulated no question.Less than half of what we have currently would be somewhere closer to the ideal number but the world in general isn’t actually overpopulated,just overcrowded, which equates to dwindling life quality across the board for all.WEFminster works this to their advantage of course,stuffing our lands daily like some fois gras duck liver until bursting point.We’re long past that point sadly.
Hardly, I travel all across the country and am amazed at how much green space we have in the UK. Plenty of space to build and welcome many more from overseas.
just what sandown needs, more rubbish turning up, alarm bells ringing
So council has land and could of built homes on this itself and made all of them affordable or rentable and saved money on Housing in hotels and temp accommodation and circumstantial family breakdown and child costs in Care system,so any reward from sale will be at cost of other services and raised council tax !.
Someone from the Council… define “Affordable Housing”, please.
Affordable Housing, you will never get an answer from them or even MP’s.
The definition that they believe is correct is this, if someone can afford it, then it is affordable.
Hmm, more unneeded overpriced for moneymakers from London or wherever houses. Affordable…that’s a joke. More problems for the island infrastructure to cope with. How big was the brown envelope passed under the counter I wonder.
Double council tax will deter 2nd home owners.
These Homes should be built for local persons.
I’m a absolutely serious… please, somebody in authority… PLEASE define “Affordable Housing”. This terminology is used so often to obtain planning green lights. Someone must have a precise definition!
Jane, I can define it for you, as I once worked in housing.
It means affordable for those people who bothered to listen and learn from the FREE education they were given at school, college or uni.
Then these same people BOTHER to use FREE contraception, so are not burdening themselves and the state with costly children, so then, BOTH parents can do FULL time jobs, earn a decent wage, and live WITHIN their means, and GO WITHOUT expensive cars, holidays, and eating out or take away meals for several years to SAVE money for a deposit.
What ‘affordable’ is NOT for is those who get pregnant early, work a few hours a week at best, have a live in partner who rarely works. The WORLD owes no-one a living
Jane, I can define it for you, as I once worked in housing.
It means affordable for those people who bothered to listen and learn from the FREE education they were given at school, college or uni.
Then these same people BOTHER to use FREE contraception, so are not burdening themselves and the state with costly children, so then, BOTH parents can do FULL time jobs, earn a decent wage, and live WITHIN their means, and GO WITHOUT expensive cars, holidays, and eating out or take away meals for several years to SAVE money for a deposit.
What ‘affordable’ is NOT for is those who get pregnant early, work a few hours a week at best, have a live in partner who rarely works. The WORLD owes no-one a living
Spot on there Maggot.
So many young think past generations have ‘ad it easy’ as they are now home owners, but don’t want to hear of the struggle that most had to endure to buy that home.
So as these dim, selfish bunch think as they are now paid to breed children that they themselves can’t afford to fund or even feed now without state help via universal credits, that now they should ‘own their own home too’
Laughable, then they would expect it to be insured and maintained for free too.
Many have to have lavish weddings costing thousands, all new goods, carpets, and holidays, cars on tick, with one working and the other doing a few hours to up tax credits, and now ‘expect’ to be homeowners. JOG ON.
Sounds to me like rather a cynical view. However, you claim to have the credentials to make this assessment…. So, is this the formula used when developers use the term “affordable housing” in order to get their housing estates built on dairy farms and school fields? And how, then, would they ensure that the clientele earmarked for that affordable housing meet your described pre-conditions? And, in the end, at what level have the Council/developer set the term “affordable”?
What developers / councils do is build a certain percentage of homes priced UNDER the current market value of other similar or the same properties in that area.
Thus making them ‘affordable’ to those who may not otherwise be eligible to buy such properties
But you must surely realise that costly land and homes, become even more expensive as our country is filled daily with thousands of extra people despite them not necessarily living on the Island, but many displaced British people DO come here, thus making newcomers indirectly responsible for shortages of homes on the Island.
Like determining the living below the ‘poverty’ line, an average of income will ALWAYS ensure that those at the bottom, will be CLASSED as in poverty.
Wow! So developers can’t lose! All they need to do, it follows, is to over-price 80% of their new 500-strong housing estate; claim that the remaining 20% are “affordable” (by virtue of being cheaper than the other inflated 400, irrespective of price); and the planning office rubber-stamps the development on the back of the magnanimous gesture made by the developers. So, as long as the developers do their sums right, they won’t lose a penny whilst officially discounting 20% of their stock…. Hope this is not a con…. I’d hate to think that our hard-working Councillors would be duped.
Clearly Jane, developers or any business, would not be in existence if it lost out on any deals.
What you and many others seem to not grasp is people need to make profit to keep going. Risk in business can wipe out people, so of course profits are needed to cater for bad times.
Say the developers bought land at height of boom, now that land is worth less, house prices are falling, so the profit less or negative in some cases.
I am willing to bet that YOU and any whingers on here, IF they won two hundred thousand would NOT be buying a property, to rent CHEAPLY to some skank, to abuse, refuse to pay rent, and be almost impossible to ‘evict’ as it had breed a batch of clones
So profits HAVE to be high to cover such low life now
The level set can vary, but property classed as affordable will likely be around 10% cheaper than if it were a full market value.
What then happens is, to ensure it keeps it’s affordability value for the future, the buyer then HAS to sell it for the same percentage they ‘gained’ when they bought it, ie 10% less to future buyers.
Problem is many have clauses that are abused, whereby the local buyer ‘affordable homes’ have to be offered to locals, but after a certain time of being on the market IF they haven’t sold, then they can be sold to mainland buyers.
The working class have no right to expect to buy their own homes if they have chosen to indulge in squandering their income & benefits on living beyond means
Truth hurts
Hi Jane, I think affordable housing is a shared ownership, where you buy a percentage of the house and rent the rest from the developer, I think you can up your percentage at later time when you can afford it, not 100%sure but think that’s what affordable means.
Excellent news, dilute the Island gene pool
Well there’s a surprise
The prof of the pudding is in the eating 30 affordable houses to who certainly not to the person on the average Island wage this is just a carrot and we know that donkeys love carrots
The poor were never supposed to own their own homes. Most can’t afford to feed, clothe, and look after their own children without tax credits, universal credits, cheap rent and council tax, so how the heck will these people be able to pay house insurance, pay for a new roof, boiler and maintenance, when they are all just ‘used to’ picking up a phone and whining to a landlord to fix all the issues or they will ‘sue’.
If all the poor own the homes many will become slums in a decade or so as they won’t save, but blow all their income on having what they want, then, as now, expect ‘others’ to pick up the tab for their self inflicted ‘plight’.