The American tycoon Donald Trump is to receive free land worth an estimated £5 million from Aberdeenshire Council in a move that has been damned as a taxpayer funded sweetener, according to the Sunday Herald.
The US developer wants to build a £1 billion luxury golfing resort at the Menie estate at Balmedie in Aberdeenshire. The public inquiry into the plans is expected to wrap up this week. Once it is complete the Scottish government can still order that the development does not go ahead.
Paul Johnston, the Lib-Dem councillor who represents the area in which Trump wants to build his resort, says Aberdeenshire Council has a policy of demanding that builders and developers provide some affordable housing - cheap houses for low income families - in return for being granted permission to work on major developments in the area.
The developers are required to provide the land and arrange for the building of the cheap housing. However, an official council document passed to the Sunday Herald shows that the local authority is going to gift the land build the cheap housing tto Trump so he can build 98 cheap homes.
Additionally, the council is to allow Trump to build an extra 52 "open market" homes - houses available on the mortgage market to buyers - on the free land.
Trump's primary development - the luxury golfing resort - will involve golf courses, a five-star hotel, 950 holiday homes, 500 upmarket houses and 36 golf villas. The council document states that the affordable housing site will be a "site or sites within Balmedie to be provided by the Council or a body nominated by the Council".
The value of the free land to be given to Trump comes in at about £5m. A similar stretch of land nearby in Chapelwell that had 150 housing units built on it sold for £2m five years ago
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Source: Sunday Herald
Date: 30 June 08
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