Douglas Council is to spend more than £9m on building 52 flats in Willaston on the former police station site.

Councillors voted this week to approve the designs for the block of flats on Snaefell Road, but members criticised the government for making it cut out key parts of its plans.

The council’s housing committee, chaired by Councillor Claire Wells, is behind the move.

Having demolished the former flats, church hall and police house, the council will spend £9,479,100 on building the 52-flat complex, including parking.

extra

The council had sought to spend an extra £827,400 on the project for extra changes including adding two extra flats, additional tree protection measures, road safety factors and Association for Environment Conscious Building compliance.

However, as central government’s Department of Infrastructure said it would not support the additional spending, which would scupper any loan application, the council has had to remove a number of these.

Council leader David Christian, who has previously attacked the DoI for preventing the council spending its own money in building housing for its residents, said: ’It is disappointing that the DoI won’t support things such as the new playground.’

The council had planned to move the park from around the back of the planned site into a more central location, providing it with better natural light and making it less susceptible to heavy rain,

When asked if the DoI had provided any more reasons as to why it was rejecting a bid to spend more money, Mrs Wells said the council had received no information other than to say it was due to higher costs.

Councillors also criticised the decision to install carpets in the new flats instead of wooden floors.

Mrs Wells said she was concerned that if carpets didn’t go in now, the council would have to foot the bill at a later date but agreed as it was the will of members.

However, despite issues surrounding carpets and savings having to be made, a majority of councillors backed the plans.

Councillor Falk Horning admitted he had previously been critical of housing plans put forward to the council.

But he praised Mrs Wells and the committee for their ’excellent’ work and designs on the new Willaston flats.

Mr Horning added that he was surprised that the DoI would not support the council in making its buildings as energy efficient as possible which meant council had to drop plans for solar panels.