Planning Officers said NO – but weirdly chairman said YES……The £90 million question is: WHY?
- Planning officers wanted the Lord Street scheme refused
- Chair Rob Callister overruled them, and drove approval through with bizarre intervention
- Controversial developer’s project got policy bent on affordable housing and open space
- Fresh questions swirl – because this is the same site tied to the now infamous £90m Lord Street case, involving a separate property company
- Stephen & Conor Bradley have been branded the Isle of Man’s ‘luckiest’ developers after THREE ‘amazing’ strokes of good fortune
By Expose Team & Felix von Der Geest
The Isle of Man’s most controversial building site has finally got planning permission – but the smell around it has only got stronger.
One local businessman, who has regularly pundited on the twists and turns of the Lord Street saga for Expose News, commented:
‘Against the odds, the Isle of Man’s unluckiest real estate has collided, with what appears to be, our luckiest developer.
‘Stephen Bradley has had three amazing streaks of good fortune.
‘Firstly, he won the tender for the site, beating off the preferred bidder, at the last minute despite only paying a fraction of what the other bidder had offered.
‘Then, an oven-ready planning application fell into his lap.
The sudden death of the owner Wyyttavin Ltd., meant that a previous application was withdrawn in July 2024 – however, the plans were later re-purposed by Lord Street Development SPV Limited.
‘Now, he’s been awarded planning permission – even though his plan directly contravened government policy.
‘Great work, if you can get it.
‘If you didn’t live in the isle of Man, it wouldn’t make any sense – nudge, nudge, wink, wink.’
But real-estate serendipity aside, this was not a case of planners and politicians marching in step behind a clean, policy-compliant scheme.
The planning officer had firmly recommended refusal.
His concern was blunt: the lack of affordable housing and public open space was too great a departure from established planning policy to approve.
Yet the scheme was rescued on 2 March by chairman Rob Callister’s casting vote against refusal, then astonishingly waved through on 16 March by four votes to two.
That alone is enough to make eyebrows rise.
But Callister did not just chair the meeting.
He took what IOM Today itself described as the ‘unusual step’ of making a statement outlining his own proposal to back the development, saying he could not support the site being left vacant.
The irony will not be lost on regular readers of Expose News.
In other words, the man chairing the process did not merely referee the argument – he stepped into the ring and threw the decisive punches.
And what exactly got approved?
A huge mixed-use scheme on the old bus station site with a cinema, commercial space and 85 apartments, crowned by a 12-storey block that will become the tallest building in Douglas.
The row was never really about height.
Even the officer accepted the site could take a large building.
The real problem was policy:
- zero affordable housing,
- no public open space,
- special priviledges.
Lord Street Development SPV Limited’s scheme was asking for special treatment because the developer said the numbers did not stack up otherwise – unless they receive a £15m grant from the Government which effectively pays for their multimillion pound profit
That is where the story starts to pong, according to observers.
The applicant wanted a first-of-its-kind ‘review mechanism’ so it would only pay the full commuted sum for affordable housing and open space once the project achieved a 20% return.
This was despite the possibility of £15.8 million in government backing.
In the end, Callister backed a lower 17.5% trigger – but also signed-off on the developer’s preferred two-stage structure, and his proposal passed by four votes to two.
So, the message from the top looked uncomfortably simple: officers can object, policy can bend, but this scheme was getting its green light.
A member of the Isle of Man’s business community added: ‘The reality is that Government is commercially naïve when it comes to projects such as this, they won’t have a clue if the profit trigger is actually met, given they have to rely on the developer providing them the numbers.
‘They’re now even saying they have no legal obligation to deliver the bus station!’
The politics only make it look worse.
After the decision, Callister publicly hailed the development as a scheme that would bring jobs and ‘renewed sense of pride’.
He is entitled to think that.
But when the same political figure overrules officers, shapes the approval and then goes out selling the result, people are entitled to ask whether the distance between decision-maker and cheerleader got a bit too narrow for comfort.
And then there is Stephen Bradley.
Public reporting shows Bradley chaired Business Isle of Man in 2018 while Callister served as political member for Visit Isle of Man, both inside the Department for Enterprise’s executive-agency structure.
That does not prove a stitch-up.
But it does mean, according to a source, ‘that this was not some random applicant appearing out of nowhere before some detached chairman.
‘It was all happening inside a very small island establishment where names, faces and influence tend to travel fast.’
Worse still, this is not just any development site.
Lord Street is already tied to a separate legal headache – the £90 Million Lord Street case.
Another developer is suing the Department of Infrastructure, Treasury and consultants Lambert Smith Hampton over an earlier failed redevelopment process.
So this is the same cursed patch of Douglas that has already spawned allegations of mishandling, years of delay and a colossal damages claim.
Against that backdrop, forcing through another controversial approval over officer objections does not calm nerves – it makes the whole place look even more like a case study in how not to do public business.
Our source added: ‘Taken one way, this is regeneration.
‘Taken another, it is the latest example of the rules going soft when the right development, on the right site, backed by the right people, comes along.
‘And that is why Lord Street still stinks. Not because anyone has proved corruption – they have not – but because the whole thing fails the smell test.’
