Braddan Commissioners have handed over the keys to residents of their new public sector housing site, Mullen Doway.

The complex of 30 apartments, which was planned to re-home Cronkbourne Village residents, was designed by Ellis Brown Architects and includes future-proof, eco-friendly features such as solar panels and high quality insulation.

Twenty-four of these are two-bedroom, and six one-bedroom.

Chair Andrew Jessopp says although Mullen Dowey won’t increase the commission’s housing stock, it has already reduced waiting list numbers, taking fourteen people off it.

He described Cronkbourne village, from which no residents will actually be moving into Mullen Doway, as ’well past its sell-by date in terms of local authority housing’ but which is ’now being made into quite a nice private development’.

’We’ll be looking at other opportunities now that this is almost complete and [has people] moved in, to whether we can provide further accommodation in the future - but first of all we’ve still got to put the final finishing touches to this development,’ said Mr Jessopp.

’There were a few issues along the way: the main block had to be moved by a metre to stop it falling over the cliff, we had issues with drainage that finally got resolved, we’ve had a few issues with the very nice bay windows that people have got [in the apartments] which have now been resolved fortunately.’

He continued: ’We’ve got now I think some of best apartments that anybody could find on the Isle of Man.

’We’ve designed them in such a way so that they’re future-proofed, we’ve tried to build them to a higher standard than was actually required by building standards in terms of insulation etc.

’We have PV panels so that the common areas’ lighting is powered by solar power,’ said Mr Jessopp.

The last couple of years have been turbulent for the building industry, with the pandemic seeing sharp increases in material costs.

So have the commissioners managed to complete the project on-budget?

’It’s going to be slightly over, but taking into account all the upheaval that we’ve had with Covid, then it’s not looking too bad by comparison to what it could have been,’ Mr Jessopp said.

’We were talking about a £4.5 million project, there’s probably going to be about a £200-300,000 overspend.

’It’s going to be less than half a million anyway, which if you say it quickly doesn’t sound like a lot, but obviously we wanted to try to keep it as close with the original budget as possible.

’As I say certain things have changed along the way, due to the fact that when we’ve physically gone and looked at something and thought "well, this isn’t quite right", we needed to get it changed and obviously that brings a little extra cost.

’But overall we’re pretty pleased with the end result, and we’re hoping that the tenants really enjoy their homes and we wish them well.

Another large capital project that is underway for the commissioners is the new £7 million Braddan community centre, which is expected to open around Easter next year