The Prince of Wales’s sustainable architecture charity is working so closely
with a housebuilder developing new estates in beauty spots that it is
causing alarm about its independence.
The Prince’s
Foundation for the Built Environment has embarked on a ground-breaking
mission with Scotia Homes, a family-owned housebuilder, to inject model
urban communities into five settlements in Scotland.
The developer commissions and pays for the foundation to go into towns and
villages, carry out consultations and prepare master plans for the local
communities, as well as to help to persuade authorities of their merits.
One proposed estate requires the chopping down of parts of a wood teeming with
red squirrels. Another would appear to cut off a pathway used by deer to get
from a hillside in the Cairngorm Mountains, in the Scottish Highlands, to
the River Dee.
The Prince’s Foundation went so far as to record a formal objection to
planners in a national park for permitting too few houses to be constructed
on a greenfield site where the developers want to build.
The village closest to the Royal Family’s Scottish retreat at Balmoral Castle
has become bitterly divided by the number of homes proposed. The majority of
people on the electoral roll in the village have signed a petition against
the scale of development.
David Miller, of the Alliance
for Lobbying Transparency, said: “The fact that the foundation is funded
by the interests they are promoting fatally undermines any claim they might
have to be a neutral and disinterested party promoting good works.”
Bill Bruce, the founder of Scotia Homes and a fellow Aberdeen Angus breeder,
wrote to the Prince and was invited to meet him at his residence on the
Balmoral Estate in 2005.
Charles has lavished praise on him since. In a speech on sustainability at
Holyroodhouse last year the Prince highlighted “the visionary participation”
of Mr Bruce in the work of his foundation.
Yet the sheer scale of the blueprints for the model communities has caused
dismay to wildlife lovers, history enthusiasts and locals.
In Ellon, Aberdeenshire, a meadow — part of which was previously earmarked for
25 homes — is now due to have 254 built on it. In Ballater, in the
Cairngorms, 250 homes are being proposed in a mainly greenfield area.
Scotia Homes has also been working with the foundation to develop Nairn and
Castletown, in the Highlands, and Cove, near Aberdeen.
The Prince’s Foundation begins by going into each community and conducting a
procedure that it calls “Enquiry by Design”. Openly sponsored by Scotia
Homes, the charity holds workshops and has discussions with local people and
community representatives.
Experts from as far as America are flown to Scotland. They study existing
historic homes and layouts of streets and prepare a “pattern book” of
designs based on their findings. The Ellon pattern book won a Scottish
government award for quality in planning and design.
Hank Dittmar, the foundation’s chief executive, said: “I utterly reject any
suggestion that there is a conflict of interest between the foundation’s
charitable objectives and its work with private sector companies such as
Scotia Homes.
“I also reject any suggestion that the foundation’s work in organising
Enquiries by Design is subject to a hidden commercial agenda.”
A letter written by Mr Dittmar and seen by The Times indicates that the
intention is to supplement the work of the statutory authorities.
Enquiry by Design, he writes, “confers the benefit of supporting planning
departments’ limited resources for long-term decision making”.
There is difficulty persuading members of the public to turn up for the
community consultation events. In Cove, a former fishing village of 7,000, a
dozen people made it to the first workshop.
Michelle McPartlin, a member of the community council, the lowest tier of
local government in Scotland, noted that the foundation had provided some
“terrific artists”.
But there was an air of unreality about its published blueprint for the
community in Cove. One artist’s impression showed a “view towards the new
train station”. There is no new station in Cove and nor does Network Rail or
the Scottish government have any intention to provide one.
The Times suggested to Mr Dittmar that the idea that a Scotia Homes
housing development would result in a village railway station was a
fairytale.
“It’s not a fantasy,” he insisted. “It’s an idea that might be achieved over
the long range.” He said that the suggestion of a station had come from a
member of the public.
The charity says that it will only consider land already earmarked for
housing. But in Ellon and Ballater, home of the Highland Games and a mere
toss of the caber from Balmoral, the proposals involve extending the
building heavily into greenfield sites.
The Prince’s philosophy is to create “sustainable”, walkable communities where
people can live, work and shop. The foundation says that it is waging war on
“bog standard, suburbia boxes”, whose residents are entirely dependent on
the car. Instead of making speeches or writing pamphlets, however, the
charity decided to team up with a developer to prove that the low-carbon
ideal could be achieved.
Scotia Homes pays the foundation to carry out the consultations but the
charity declined to say how much money it received. The foundation said only
that it received less than 5 per cent [£240,000] of its annual £4.8 million
income from any single source and “considerably less” in the case of Scotia
Homes.
“No one likes free advice so we believe that for people to take you seriously
you have to deliver something in a professional manner,” Mr Dittmar said.
“We charge essentially commercial rates for our work because we think we are
good enough. It has been a straight business proposition.” It is this
apparent commercialisation of charitable advice that disturbs the Alliance
for Lobbying Transparency.
An unpleasant shock can come to communities when they realise just how many
homes are envisaged. The glossy booklet produced by the foundation as the
first stage of its “master plan” for Ballater in November 2006 makes no
mention of numbers.
But in July 2007 the Cairngorms National Park Authority published its local
plan projecting 250 homes on the site, a far higher density than on
neighbouring estates. Minutes show that this figure emerged from the
foundation’s work.
The authority envisaged allowing 90 of those homes be built in the next five
years. But Mr Dittmar lodged a formal objection on behalf of the Prince’s
Foundation, stating: “In order to maximise wider benefits to the community .
. . and ensure a quality public realm, sufficient critical mass will be
needed in the initial, and most costly, stages of development.”
The village of Ballater has been divided by the proposals. In its formal
representation to the local plan inquiry the community council opposed the
250 homes in a poignant statement highlighting how villager had been turning
on villager. “It is with considerable sadness that the Ballater and Crathie
Community Council has to admit that the proposal to enlarge the housing
stock of Ballater has split parts of our community,” it said.
In the town of Ellon there was amazement when Scotia Homes submitted its
application for 254 homes on fields next to Ellon Castle, which had been
earmarked by the local council for 25 units.
The scale of the development will require road access through historic woods
that are home to red squirrels, bats and badgers. Damage would be done to
the deer dykes, historic structures built to protect the now ruined castle
gardens from deer.
The foundation said that the figure of 250 homes in Ellon emerged from one of
its workshops.
Tim Canning, a neighbourhood residents leader in Ellon, said: “If the Prince’s
Foundation is interested in building a new community and a new community way
of living there’s something they need to be considering first and foremost —
that’s the existing community they want to drop this thing into.”
The blueprints
Ellon
A field by Ellon Castle is to be turned into a 254-home development by Scotia
Homes and Barratt East Scotland
Ballater
A model community with a capacity for 250 homes would be built on the edge of
this village, between a playing field, a hill popular with walkers and the
River Dee
Cove
The projected development in a dormitory settlement on the edge of Aberdeen
would consist of “thoughtfully laid-out” homes and some shops
Nairn
Land has been earmarked for a large development to the south of Nairn.
Consultations are continuing
Castletown
Scotia Homes plans homes on disused land. The Prince attended the Inquiry by
Design
dkennedy@thetimes.co.uk
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