NEW plans to knock down a former Gower pub and build houses in its place are being assessed by Swansea Council.
A developer called Bradbar Homes Ltd wants to build five detached open market houses and two pairs of semi-detached shared ownership homes at the old Greyhound Inn, Oldwalls.
An application for nine new homes, including four affordable ones for rent, was narrowly approved by the council’s planning committee six years ago.
The then landowner went on to raise financial viability concerns and sought unsuccessfully to amend a legal agreement between him and the council in order to claw back more costs for the affordable homes.
He was successful in amending the planning permission to change the development’s layout, but no homes ended up being built.
The site’s current owner, Bradbar Homes, submitted what’s known as a pre-application enquiry to the council in 2022 to build the nine homes and has followed it up now with a detailed planning application.
It said that while the previous planning permission remained extant, or valid, the viability issues had not gone away. A design and access statement submitted as part of its application said the development “is not something which could be delivered until the viability situation improves through an increase in house prices or decrease in building costs”.
Bradbar Homes has therefore proposed that the four affordable two-bedroom homes should be shared ownership rather than affordable rental, meaning it would claw back 70% of the costs rather than 42%. This would enable a 15% profit to be made on the scheme rather than 9.6%.
“Whilst this is still at below the typical level of 17.5% profit for such development, it would achieve a profit level which the applicant would be able to proceed with the development immediately and allow for the delivery of the housing and affordable housing at the site,” said the design and access statement.
The four-bedroom open market homes would face the main road and have their own driveway, while the proposed shared ownership ones at the rear would have a shared access. All the nine houses would have a garden and slate roofs. Fifteen new trees would replace four that are proposed to be cut down, along with other landscaping and ecological measures.
The design and access statement said the council had a raised a concern at the pre-application enquiry about the scheme’s compliance with planning policy because the village of Oldwalls no longer had a settlement limit, meaning new housing projects would need to be 100% affordable. The applicant’s case is that the extant permission was a material consideration because it constituted a “fall-back” position and therefore “should be afforded a high degree of weight” in the determination of the matter.
The Greyhound Inn dated from the 19th Century and was well-regarded for its real ale and food. The planning committee heard at a meeting in 2018 that the pub generated £1.13 million in 2015. But trade declined, business rates increased, and the premises and adjacent land was put up for sale for £1.1 million.
There was a lot of local objection when the plans were first submitted to demolish the pub and build homes, but also many letters of support. Wooden fencing has now been installed at the site, and the roof slates have been removed for safety reasons.
