The former Weston Academy primary school in the West Wight will be sold for £400,000 to make way for a potential 16 houses. Since closing in 2015, Weston Academy, in Totland, has sat empty and the Isle of Wight Council’s previous attempts to sell it have failed. Now with government funding available, and multiple bidders coming forward, the council’s cabinet agreed on Thursday night to sell the site to its preferred option: Bath-based company, Strategic Green Land. The company has offered £400,000 and, subject to planning permission, proposes turning the site into 16 houses, of which 4 would be either sold or rented at an ‘affordable’ rate. The bid has also proposed to retain the original stone schoolhouse and much of the Victorian school buildings. The council received multiple bids ranging from eleven to 16 houses, with prices offered from £1 (with overage paid at a later date) to £420,000. The authority said both the lowest and highest offers were ‘unattractive’ for various reasons as the highest bid did not propose to build affordable housing and overage leaves a lot of financial unknowns. In a report sent to the council’s cabinet, officers revealed there were numerous issues which affected the development viability of the school and it did not have the money to deal with them. Since then the council has secured nearly £200,000 in the Brownfield Land Release Fund which the developer can use to make the site suitable for housing. There are tight timescales attached to the government funding, the council said, which would mean it could not re-market the site in time to attract another offer. Under the grant, the site must be released for housing by the end of the month (March). Despite the school being empty for nearly ten years, the council has continued to pay to maintain and secure the site which costs around £3,600.
FORMER WESTON ACADEMY TO BE SOLD FOR £400,000 – TO MAKE WAY FOR HOUSES
- Trending
- Comments
- Latest
Useful Links
External Links
We used to deride those British having large amounts of children if poor, knowing that we would all be burdened with supporting their choice of avoiding the use of contraception and selfishly imposing their poverty onto the ‘next generation’, which would grow worse when they all stared reproducing from puberty upwards.
Sadly now we are keeping the worlds impoverished doing the same here, and when it was just our own, then the system could ‘just’ about cope, now ever more of our land is being built upon, and as we see, hospitals, doctors, dentists and public money can not longer fund the way of life we rightly expected.
Being ‘kind’ makes us all suffer.
Being ‘unkind’ makes us all selfish, privileged, entitled twats engaging in ridiculous tribalism which went out with hunter gatherers. Hot news: we’ve evolved. Well some of us, anyway. Look up zero-sum game and try to get your head round it.
Only you Ivy can find a negative around being kind..
Why don’t you focus on the slight reduction of illegal boats crossing the water?
So in effect a developer is getting the land for just 200k, and the profits they make we’ll never see. Keep the land, partition it, sell to self-build first time buyers. Or, non-profit community housing charity. No more excess profiteering from our family silver. When will you learn? When we’ve sold the lot and our asses are owned by off shore equity companies??
That’s it build more houses to sink more of our little island that is already rapidly disappearing.
It’s not floating, it’s a land mass. They’re not building anything on the coast. It’s disappearing due to erosion and that’s down to weather.
Oh for god’s sake do some bloody research before you spew your bile. Illegal boats: in decline now but was largely sex-trafficked females from Albania. If sent back they’d be sex-trafficked again, And again. Not your problem? No, but then that’s geography for you, and privilege. And spitefulness. Retired buy houses here because they no longer need to be in London for work. The housing crisis has been rising due to archaic planning consent SINCE 1947, firstly because of the war, and the population then stood at 45 million. Please don’t try to tell me that 35 million immigrants have come here since.
Why even bother boiling your blood. Everyone knows ivy searle is a wind-up spoof and you fall for it every time.
Karen: what’s in a name?
Ironic choice
Oh I,v,y, you’re such a card with your racist, xenophobic comments. I bet you keep them all chuckling down at the con club.
What a tenuous link, it’s ‘almost’ impressive how you relate every article to your hate speech…