Chapelpark in Forfar is a £5.6 million project which is transforming a B-listed school building into 29 high quality affordable homes for social rent, comprising 18 one-bedroom flats, six two-bedroom flats, one three-bedroomed flat and four five-bedroomed townhouses.
This innovative development came about as a direct result of the school closure as part of the multimillion pound Forfar schools project. This saw the refurbishment of town primaries, a new build school at Whitehills and the closure of Chapelpark and Wellbrae Primary Schools. The use of the site, which was surplus to education requirements, for social housing would represent a beneficial use for the community and would help to meet the identified housing needs in the area.
With increasing demand for social housing the Housing Division needed to identify a dynamic way of meeting these needs by maximising the use of existing buildings in the area. The Chapelpark Project would provide for the redevelopment of the vacant former school buildings which would secure the retention and renovation of important listed buildings while providing affordable housing for the community.
The project’s success has relied heavily on a joined up approach, both in terms of cross departmental collaboration, but also in terms of bringing several strategic strands together to deliver housing outcomes which meet corporate objectives
The key drivers behind this development:
- Continue regeneration of the area by replacing older stock with newer, more appealing housing in line with the councils aim to create places that people are proud to call home.
- Create larger family homes to meet the needs of households on the waiting list, needs that cannot be met elsewhere in the town.
- Contribute to the Scottish Governments, and the Council’s target of building affordable homes.
- Contribute to the Council’s ambition of having at least 20% of all newly constructed housing suitable for particular needs.
Outcomes
- Improved quality of town centre housing stock
- Availability of size of housing to meet local need
- More affordable housing available
- Strong tenant engagement and satisfaction:
- The project’s success has relied heavily on a joined up approach, both in terms of cross departmental collaboration, but also in terms of bringing several strategic strands together to deliver housing outcomes which meet corporate objectives.
- The involvement of tenants has been key to the success of the project thus far and the tenant information event proved really popular and is something that will be replicated in our future projects. Of the tenants who were surveyed, 100% rated the event as excellent; one tenant said, “Very worthwhile exercise, all questions answered”. This process adds to the tenant journey process that we are aiming to introduce to all of our new developments in order to ensure that the tenant is involved from an early stage of the build.
