The conversion of Kingsgate College in Broadstairs into 18 apartments and penthouses is now underway.
The Fairways project at the 1930s building is being led by Future Homes and,when complete, will comprise a collection of two and three apartments and three luxury penthouses.
Kingsgate College, set in three acres of ground, was the former Chaucer College language school. It was decided the location was impractical and inconvenient for its students and the preference was to use the sister college in Canterbury.
After failed attempts from a private treaty agent to sell the vast freehold Connect UK Auctions found a buyer.
The property had a guide price of up to £4 million but sale was agreed for a sum just over £2.8million last year.
The proposed development will retain most of the woodland. Trees along the boundary of the application site with Convent Road are the subject of a Tree Preservation Order.
The apartments will be individually designed with open-plan living spaces, high ceilings and large windows that hint at the building’s original interior layout. Most apartments on the upper floors will have a private balcony while the homes on the ground floor each feature private landscaped gardens. The penthouses will offer views over the golf course and beyond to the coast.
According to the planning documents the principal entrance into the building will be maintained and a central car port and soft landscaping buffers and hedging is proposed. The car port will house a series of Photovoltaic Panels to operate electrical vehicle charging points.
Two new outbuildings will provide a cycle store and bin area. There will also be 40 car parking and 27 bicycle spaces.
Developer payments included £400,000 towards the provision off site affordable housing within Thanet.
Prices at The Fairways start from £465,000 for a two-bedroom garden apartment on the ground floor, and £850,000 for the penthouses. To find out more and reserve a home, call 01843 604504 or visit www.futurehomesuk.com/the-fairways.
Another development with nothing affordable as usual. Allowing all this development everywhere is just increasing prices further out of reach elsewhere in Thanet.
Thanet Council should be ensuring developers stick to their obligations of including affordable housing wherever possible.
quite right ! another example of profiteering capitalist greed thats spreading through thanet.
Why not build whole estates like what was called council estates back in the day and give people a chance to be able to buy at a proper price. Or is that to much like common sense
“Developer payments included £400,000 towards the provision off site affordable housing within Thanet.”
18 properties at an average price of £600k therefore £400k is significantly less than one property eqivalent. 30% affordable would be about 5 properties, this is about 5%!
Looks like another TDC offiecrs/councillors sell out at the cost of local residents desperate to get on the housing ladder.
But the 400k is only meant to represent the difference between the “affordable” valuation and the real valuation. Its a sensible compromise the council will be able to provide more homes for the same input , plus the council can build what it wants rather than what a developer puts in for.
Sorry – how does £400k equate to 30% of 18 homes?
The developers will typically offer the Section 106 (affordable) housing for sale to ‘registered providers of social housing’ (mainly housing associations). The section 106 housing has a value that’s less than normal, because of the lower rents that housing associations can collect from their tenants. The cost to the developers is therefore the difference in price between the normal market value of a dwelling and the price they could sell it to a housing association for use as affordable housing.
In practice, housing associations might not necessarily be interested in buying a few flats in a small development. This may be particularly the case in an up-market development where there may be high service changes – not only for building maintenance, but also for gardening, looking after any communal areas and maybe even paying a caretaker. The housing association can’t realistically pass these high service charges onto their tenants, and probably can’t afford to absorb these costs themselves.
In larger developments, separate blocks of flats (or houses) may be built specifically for a housing association (possibly to their own spec), and the housing association can decide themselves how to manage them and hence keep the cost down for their tenants. There might potentially be multiple housing associations bidding for the affordable housing on a large development.
In small developments, it’s common for the section 106 agreement to have a payment in lieu of building affordable housing. This being roughly the difference between the full market value of the dwellings they would normally be expected to provide to the housing association and what a housing association would pay for them.