General Developments

Some interesting applications to be decided at next week’s planning committee:

Dumball’s Road - 2 residential schemes that came out in the news a few months back. The 25 story tower next to the college and the 2 building scheme behind Lloyd’s (?) building. Good to see these 2 reach this stage and I like the 2 building one as not to dis-similar to brickworks
https://planning.cardiff.gov.uk/online- ... 930415.pdf


https://planning.cardiff.gov.uk/online- ... 966428.pdf

And 3 student accommodations
- Bradley Court with the designs released last summer - I honestly hate this ugly building so much
- Howard Gardens - meh design but as an Adamsdown, I’m against this one. I LOVE West Wing development. Eclipse is ok, looks unfinished. I do feel for the residents of the houses by Howard Gardens if this goes ahead. And apparently Adamsdown were promised the bowling green as open space as don’t have enough
- your monthly City Road development

Excited to see the Dumballs Road developments, but I suspect the student housing ship has well and truly sailed, I doubt if even some of the projects currently with planning permission will get built. Which is a good thing in the case of an abomination like Bradley Court.

Also interesting to see a couple of fairly substantial social housing projects in the committee agenda, in Birchgrove and Llanishen. This tends to back up this report from the Guardian last week ( https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2018/mar/05/british-cities-developers-affordable-housing-manchester-sheffield ) showing Cardiff building by far and away the biggest affordable housing percentage of any of the cities surveyed.

Interested to see if this is down to council policies or Welsh Government guidelines.

Are they affordable or social - if affordable more likely a symptom of low house prices in Cardiff compared to big English cities.

Cardiff has higher house prices than any northern English city.

Are they affordable or social - if affordable more likely a symptom of low house prices in Cardiff compared to big English cities.

Nope. That's not how affordable housing is defined. Affordable homes (excluding social housing) are homes where the rent is less than 80% of the local market rate or where morgage repayments are greater than the average local social housing rent but subsantially less than the average morgage repayments in the local market

The house prices relative to other cities or indeed relative to local incomes are irrelevent.

Oh ok - sounds like well done to Cardiff council then

And that's certainly something you don't hear in here every day.

https://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/wale ... 0-14391540

I do like both the residential schemes, especially since Portabella are in charge of the tower.

The student accommodation however... I really do agree with the rejections for the corner of park place. Whilst I would love to see something done to this corner, I don't think this is the right scheme.

https://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/wales-news/four-huge-new-developments-1000-14391540

I do like both the residential schemes, especially since Portabella are in charge of the tower.

The student accommodation however... I really do agree with the rejections for the corner of park place. Whilst I would love to see something done to this corner, I don't think this is the right scheme.

It would be good if they make a start on both residential schemes fairly soon (assume they will be approved). It'll really improve that area and hopefully more residential schemes will follow. It would have been nice if it had been master-planned though, particularly to make sure some facilities for all the new residential tenants are created somehow, maybe an express supermarket etc.

As for the student accommodation on Park Place, I don't mind it as a building so much, just don't want it on that plot. It's a shame it's not a refurb or rebuild of the office.

Surely the easiest way to build 'affordable' housing is to build rubbish?