You may have noticed increased activity at the former secondary school site at Carn Thomas on St Mary’s. Contractors are working to clear the site of building material leftover from the demolition of the school in order to allow further investigations and pre-development work to begin.
The site clearance is expected to be completed by February 2022 and is being funded from the £315,000 allocated to this site from the total £497,000 Land Release Fund grant. The material cleared from the site will be stored at Pendrethen Quarry, until the Council can get permission from the Environment Agency to use the material in other projects, including the self-build scheme at Old Town and coastal defence works.
The Council is in negotiations with the Housing Association, LiveWest, to determine whether they can use this site to build up to 23 affordable homes. We will provide an update in the coming weeks on the progress of this work.
The Land Release Fund provides capital funding for land remediation and small-scale infrastructure to local authorities across England, to bring otherwise unviable local authority-owned sites forward for housing. It is delivered by the One Public Estate programme which is a collaboration between Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, the Local Government Association and the Cabinet Office.