- 85 flats are planned for the old bus station site
- Not one affordable home is guaranteed under the current proposal
- Developers still argue contributions should depend on profitability
- Critics say the public is being asked to fund homes they may never afford to live in
Last week Expose.News revealed how a prominent member of the Isle of Man business community dubbed Lord Street ‘the unluckiest real estate on the Isle of Man.’
But for many observers, the issue is now becoming something else, too – a test of whether public subsidy and public policy on the Isle of Man are being made to serve the public at all.
That is the political sting in the latest Lord Street planning row.
The revised scheme for the former Douglas bus station site includes a 12-storey tower, a cinema and 85 flats.
The application is going back before the planning committee TODAY, and despite last week’s vote to move the application a step closer, the planning officer is still recommending refusal.
The biggest immediate argument is over the so-called review mechanism.
The applicant wants a two-stage model under which commuted sums in lieu of affordable housing and public open space would only be triggered above a 20% return, capped at £1,573,925 in total.
Planning officers, by contrast, have suggested a three-stage process starting at 17.5%, with capped sums of £1,100,750 for affordable housing and £473,175 for public open space.
But underneath that technical dispute lies a much more explosive reality, sources have revealed to Expose.News.
There are 85 flats in the proposal – and not one affordable home is guaranteed.
That matters because the Island’s own housing policy says 25% provision should be affordable. On a scheme of this size, that works out at roughly 21 homes.
Instead, the public is being asked to watch yet another version of Lord Street come forward with no fixed affordable housing offer at all, while being told that financial viability limits what can be expected from the developer.
At earlier stages, the applicant’s stance was that this was not a suitable location for first-time buyers or for public sector homes for rent.
That line alone caused anger, because if central Douglas – close to transport, jobs, services and shops – is not considered suitable for ordinary working residents, then many people will ask what site ever would be.
The planning officer’s latest remarks only deepen the sense that this is an exceptional arrangement.
He said the proposed approach to contributions might be acceptable only because of this specific brownfield site and its claimed wider public benefit, and was highly unlikely to be tolerated elsewhere.
For critics, that sounds less like regeneration policy and more like policy being stretched to fit one scheme.
The second controversy is the money.
An application for £15.8 million in government support through the Island Infrastructure Scheme has remained in play. So a scheme that says it cannot bear full planning obligations is also one that could still receive a very large slice of taxpayer backing.
Strip away the jargon and the public-policy question becomes brutally simple: why should taxpayers subsidise a development that is not guaranteeing homes local people can afford?
‘What, exactly, is the point of state-backed regeneration if the public ends up funding a scheme designed to exclude ordinary working residents from living there?’ the businessman said.
‘If the Isle of Man is serious about affordable housing, then Lord Street should be the place to prove it.
‘Instead, we are being told that the public may have to help underwrite a high-profile private scheme while the affordable part is either watered down, deferred or made conditional on profit.
‘That is not regeneration. It is a transfer.’
And politically, this does not land in a vacuum.
Lord Street is already tied to the wider £90 million legal battle brought by Sondica Group over an earlier bungled redevelopment process, which allegedly involved corruption.
For years the site has stood as a symbol of drift, delay and missed opportunity.
That is why every new twist lands so heavily.
The developers say the choice is regeneration or continued dereliction.
But that is a false binary, the businessman added.
‘The real choice is between regeneration that serves the public and regeneration that asks the public to pay for homes they cannot afford, in a development where affordable provision is not fixed, the numbers keep moving, and policy appears to become more flexible the larger and more politically awkward the project becomes,’ he said.
‘That is why Lord Street still matters.
‘Not simply because it is a prominent site in Douglas.
‘But because it has become a test of who regeneration is actually for.’
