Dundee City Council has been accused of “moving the goalposts” of planning requirements after approving new student accommodation despite local objections.
Proposals to build a five-storey building of 98 studio apartments on land at Douglas Street were unanimously approved by councillors on Monday.
Council chiefs had recommended the planning committee approve the application despite it not fully complying with the local authority’s own development plan.
Officials said the proposals would help meet the demand for student accommodation in the city, as well as regenerating a “vacant” site.
But Tristan Button, who runs Dundee Music Studios located nearby, says the local authority are undermining their own Blackness Business Place Plan – developed in 2019 to stimulate commercial interest in the area.
Under this framework, flats and live-work units are only to be supported “above ground level” to support a “healthy level of desirable economic development space”.
“If you look at the report (which went before the planning committee), they have used a lot of big words to skirt around their own polices”, Mr Button said.
“The Blackness Business Place Plan is a council document and it’s taken someone from the local authority a lot of effort to go around it.
“To me, it feels like they are able to do what they want. They’ve written this big plan, they all these legal procedures and they are able to circumvent that.
“It seems the whole procedure is pointless – they are moving the goalposts.”
The approved Douglas Street proposal will see an existing warehouse demolished to make way for the accommodation.
However, Mr Button believes this will be detrimental to attracting businesses to the area, saying many start-ups began life in the building before moving on to bigger, higher-rent properties.
He added: “This is what we should be encouraging but instead we are knocking it down and building a block of flats.”
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