No affordable housing provided as Scarborough Council approves plans for further 400 homes at Middle Deepdale site

Several hundred homes are being built at the Middle Deepdale site in Eastfield.

Keepmoat Homes has been granted approval for a trio of reserved matters applications for a total of 357 properties at the Middle Deepdale development in Eastfield which is in its seventh year of construction and will eventually see around 1,350 new homes built.

A fourth application for full planning permission for 64 homes at the site has also been approved by Scarborough Borough Council’s planning committee yesterday, February 10.

The new homes will span across more than 30 acres at the site which includes a new primary school.

Plans for a further 400 homes at the Eastfield site have now been approved.

The Overdale Community Primary School has been built to ease pressure on the need for school places, but concerns have been raised that the area now needs more affordable homes and better health services.

All 357 properties as part of the trio of applications approved today will be sold as open market homes, with not a single affordable home included in the plans.

Councillor Bill Chatt, who represents the Woodlands ward, said this was disappointing. He told the meeting: "There seems to be a big cost increase on this site, so that is going to put affordable housing out.

"I don't imagine the price of wood and concrete is going to reduce, but what I do imagine is developers finding reasons not to put affordable housing on developments.

"We could end up in a situation where we are begging for these properties again, and not expecting them."

Councillor Roberta Swiers, who represents the Cayton ward, also said there is a great need for more GP and dental surgeries in the area.

She said: "We are going to have properties built in Cayton, Osgodby and here – and yet we are not moving anywhere on this.

"If we talk to people in all these areas the one thing they all say is we have no health services."

The plans approved today include a contribution of around £250,000 from the developers to improve health facilities.

This was described as "not very much" by councillors who said "substantially more" is needed to match the huge levels of development in this part of Scarborough.