Lomond Homes – Section 75 (again)

We have made a 2nd Freedom of Information request to Fife Council regarding Lomond Homes making payment to the council under the section 75 agreement for the New Farm Vales development. We published an earlier article about the agreement and the response from Fife Council – View Article.

We asked Fife Council the following questions and received the following answers;

(1) Have Lomond Homes made any payment yet, and if they have, how much was the payment for?

Response – No.

(2) What arrangements have been put in place for Lomond Homes to pay the installment of £50k

Response – Communication with Lomond Homes has been made although no confirmation of timescales has yet been received.

(3) If Lomond Homes haven’t made any payments, when is Fife Council
expecting the first payment/installment?

Response – Covered in response to question 3

(4) If Lomond Homes haven’t made any payments, what actions will Fife Council be taking to enforce the section 75 agreement?

Response – This will depend on the outcome of the communications with Lomond Homes although clearly a section 75 agreement is a legally binding agreement and therefore Fife Council will use its powers as part of the recovery of any outstanding debts.

For the first article on the overdue payment by Lomond Homes we received a reply on the 14th of February, the questions that were asked above, was received on the 15th of April. 61 days have passed, and Lomond Homes have not made any payments, nor have they agreed to any timescale to make the payments.

What is of more concern, is that Lomond Homes appear to be in breach of the Section 75 agreement already, specifically;

First of £50,000 due within 7 days of completion of the 25th private unit within Phase 2B as the 1st Education contribution.

We know from an earlier FOI request to Fife Council that;

I have just received confirmation that 32 completion certificates have now been issued therefore the first trigger of completion of the 25th house appears to have been reached. Arrangements are in place to contact Lomond Homes to make arrangements to pay this instalment. (£50k).

Lomond Homes are in breach of the Section 75 agreement by not making the prompt payment within 7 days of completion and is currently overdue by at least 54 days.

The New Farm Vales development has already received much criticism locally, with issues including an illegal access road when the development work first began, the issue of the pathway which has caused in-fighting between Grace Street and New Farm Vales residents, and now the non-payment of the Section 75 agreement.

Is it correct for Lomond Homes to profit from the New Farm Vales development while it is in breach of contract? Will Lomond Homes ever pay up? We do not know and we have sent an email to Lomond Homes, hopefully they will respond with answers to our questions.

We will continue to send Freedom of Information request to Fife Council concerning the section 75 agreement until such time as Lomond Homes pay their debts to the community.

You can view the 2 Freedom of Information requests and replies at:

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This entry was posted by Lochgelly on April 18, 2011 at 2:43 pm, and is filed under Lomond Homes. Follow any responses to this post through RSS 2.0.You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.