Phase 2, comprises a terrace of ten flats, five wheelchair accessible ground floor flats and five first floor flats, accessible if required by stairlift. These will be built on Association owned land at Scone, outside Perth. Planning is well underway with work beginning, hopefully, in early 2009. For the first time in Scotland, and with the agreement of Perth and Kinross Council, the build will be undertaken by a local builder who has been allowed to transfer ten units of his obligatory build of Affordable Housing, and the associated £25,000 subsidy per house, from his nearby development to our site.
Phase 3, for which we already have planning permission and have submitted building warrant applications, is for four bungalows, two detached and two semi-detached, at Penicuik, South of Edinburgh. Again these will be built on our own land to the rear of four existing cottages, beginning in mid-2009 if funding permits.
Phase 4, is planned to be 4–5 houses in the Inverness/Morayshire area once a suitable site can be identified and bought or leased. We are in touch with private land owners and Moray District Council (for possible MOD land) over this, and are identifying house builders who, in the present economic climate, may have building sites for disposal or which could be developed in partnership with us.
Phases 5–9, will cover the balance of up to 38 houses at sites in the Greater Glasgow, Stirling and, possibly, Kirkcaldy areas. We are already in talks with the Local Councils in the first two areas to identify possible sites and will seek to continue our success in obtaining such sites for free, or for lease with only peppercorn rents, or by going down the Affordable Housing line with local developers – or a combination of both. The order of building of these phases will be dictated by site and funding availability.
Our President, Lord James Selkirk, was recently able to visit our Forces in Afghanistan and, on his return, those at Headley Court at Leatherhead. These visits served to further convince him that the additional new houses are urgently needed to meet the growing demand from younger servicemen and women leaving the Services as a result of often very severe wounds suffered in the current conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Appeal, including much of the design of marketing materials, is being run entirely in-house by our small Head Office team of three, supported by a voluntary committee. As at today we have spent only £8,000 (from Association funds) on Appeal costs, or just over one half of one per cent of the total raised so far. We do not expect to spend any more unless we have to reprint or reorder some items. In other words, every penny donated has gone, and will continue to go, to the building programme.
A Total of £1,302,698 has been received or pledged to the Appeal so far. A number of encouraging holding replies have also been received from trusts, charities and other organisations across the Country pending decisions at Trustee and similar meetings. If all were to come good, and it has to be a big “if”, they could bring the running total up to somewhere approaching £3M or close to halfway towards our target of £6M. There is still, however, a very long way to go and the need of for the new disabled access ‘Houses for Heroes’ is steadily increasing. |