Planning officers back bid to scrap affordable housing in Luton's Power Court plan
Council planning officers are advising borough councillors to support a plea for the affordable housing to be removed from Luton Town Football Club’s Power Court redevelopment plans.
A formal request was made by the club’s property arm 2020 Developments (Luton) Limited to remove this aspect of its legal obligations to make the project commercially viable.
A letter asking for the variation of planning conditions was sent by professional services firm WSP to the borough council, which has described accepting this as “a significant compromise on its behalf”.
Power Court is a 21-acre brownfield site, which was in industrial use for many years and is set to be transformed by the Hatters’ new stadium plans.
As the local planning authority, the council’s development management committee is due to consider the options at its meeting next Wednesday (August 20).
The result of the independent viability assessment, which relates only to the provision of affordable housing, causes LBC a dilemma, according to a report to the committee.
“If the council opted not to accept this position, a possible outcome could be that residential development of 1,200 homes and the other elements of the regeneration project wouldn’t come forward,” explained the report.
“This includes town centre uses, parking and other associated works, such as highways, landscaping and river works, as part of the overall redevelopment of the Power Court site.
“It’s considered that the applicant’s financial viability assessment has been robustly tested by an independent assessor. While the results are disappointing, both national and local planning policy allow for viability issues to be taken into account in decision-making.
“The loss of affordable housing is unfortunate, but it’s considered that there would be many wider benefits associated with the regeneration of the Power Court site.
“These include job opportunities and additional consumer spending in the local area from new residents. There would be the opportunity to further scrutinise the viability of the scheme through a review mechanism.”
Affordable housing obligations totalled 20 per cent, said the letter from WSP. “Since 2022, the firm has been working on the delivery of housing amid what can only be described as difficult market circumstances.
“The labour, materials and other build costs have increased exponentially. These are only expected to increase further, making the future delivery of this key regeneration site even more challenging.
“An up-to-date financial viability assessment (FVA) produced by Redloft, supports this submission. The FVA concludes that the residential scheme is unviable with the current affordable housing provision.”
The planning committee is being asked to remove the requirement for affordable housing and remove a clause about the monitoring of progress around the transfer of affordable houses to a registered provider.
A further variation is to ensure the (developer) “contributions are payable at the same time as the residential parcels or built development are delivered”, added the report.
The recommendation is to accept this viability position, varying the highways contributions and an alteration to payment triggers, while changing the Section 106 terms accordingly, added the report.
Delegated authority would be granted to LBC’s head of planning “to make minor alterations to this legal agreement”, as required.