FRESH fury has sprung up in Marlborough after Wiltshire Council allowed a developer who promised to pay more than £330,000 towards providing affordable housing for young people in the town to wriggle out of the deal.

McCarthy and Stone signed a legal agreement saying it could build 27 retirement flats on the Granham Hill garage site as long as they paid £334,625 towards affordable housing in the town.

It then appealed against this, after it found that the buildings on the site, formerly the Clarke & Rodway garage, contained asbestos which it claimed was very expensive to remove safely.

After months of negotiations with Wiltshire Council, last Friday cabinet member for strategic planning, Coun Toby Sturgis, agreed to its demands and now builders will start work on the flats next month, much to the town’s anger.

Mayor Noel Barrett-Morton said: “I think it is an absolute disgrace. This is a flagrant disregard of Marlborough’s needs for affordable housing and I am very disappointed in Coun Toby Sturgis.

“Wiltshire Council have allowed them to wriggle out of this promise that they have now reneged on. The original amount promised was around £500,000 and now there is nothing.

“This was a significant amount of money that would have gone a long way to providing much needed affordable housing in the town. We do not need more housing for over-55s, we need it for young people because at the moment they cannot get a look in.”

The application, submitted in 2015, also includes car parking, communal areas and landscaping.

Rachel Rosedale, chairman of the town’s Poverty Action Group, said: “This is outrageous. After agreeing to pay hundreds of thousands of pounds to pay nothing at all is totally unacceptable. In Marlborough social housing is inadequate and is a major issue. It is becoming an antique town. McCarthy and Stone must have bamboozled Wiltshire Council.

“With the Guinness housing going recently we have even less affordable housing available. This is a worrying trend and I hope the Neighbourhood Plan addresses this.”

Others took to social media to voice their displeasure at the decision.

Rob Dickens said: “Those developers are very good at getting out of stuff they don’t like... would love to see their profit margin on this one.”

Lesley Antoinette Conway added: “Wiltshire Council should be ashamed of itself. McCarthy and Stone have tied rings around them. They can well afford to pay some if not all the agreed money.”

Letters, e-petitions and negotiations with the developer were all tried before the council finally gave permission for the scheme to go ahead.

Coun Sturgis said: “Very simply they have submitted an application and we have dealt with it in accordance with the new guidelines that were put in place last May.

“We have no alternative but to follow it. If we went against it they would appeal and we would have been awarded costs against us for wasting time. This is unfortunately out of our hands as we have to follow the national policy framework.”

A spokesman for McCarthy and Stone said: “Following ongoing discussions with Wiltshire Council regarding the site’s viability, they have confirmed, in accordance with planning policy, that there is no longer a requirement under the s.106 agreement to provide any off-site affordable housing provision.”