Plans to demolish a former school on Portland to make way for new homes will go ahead despite concerns there will be no affordable homes contribution.

Planning permission was granted at a Weymouth and Portland Borough Council planning committee meeting.

The proposals are for the part-conversion and part redevelopment of the former Underhill Community Junior School.

The application put before the committee was an amended version of the original proposal.

The first application was approved by the planning committee at its meeting in November.

The recommendation at the time of the first application was to approve the proposals subject to the completion of a legal agreement that meant the development would provide an affordable homes contribution.

As it stands all new builds on Portland need to make a 25 per cent contribution towards affordable housing, if the proposal exceeds 10 units.

However, because the development would have seen vacant buildings brought back into use, it meant that developers would only have to build 2.1 affordable homes on the site instead of five.

Since then the council’s viability advisor accepted a case put forward by the applicants, that the scheme is not sufficiently viable to provide the affordable housing contribution, on the grounds that there is insufficient surplus in the scheme.

As officers did not originally approve the first application without the affordable housing contribution it was brought back to the committee.

In a report put before councillors, the District Valuer, who carried out an independent assessment, advised that the council had no grounds to question the viability of the scheme.

Cllr Lucy Grieve spoke at the meeting and said Portland needs more affordable homes.

She added: “If you vote to allow this development now it will supply not one affordable home. Whose benefit are you voting for? The District Valuer’s Report allows a profit margin for the developer of 17 ½ per cent. Most businesses would be delighted with a profit margin of six or seven per cent. Why should Portland’s people be side-lined to service a profit of nearly three times that?”

Cllr Grieve also raised concerns about the proximity of the development to a cliff edge.

Councillors sought assistance from the planning officers during the meeting, to find wording based on the Weymouth Local Plan for objecting to the application which would hold up if the case was to go to appeal.

But planning officers said if the scheme was rejected, the council would be going against plan policies.

Local Plan Housing Policy 1 states that “a lower level of provision will only be permitted if there are good reasons to bring the development forward and the assessment [of viability] shows that it is not economically viable to make the minimum level of provision being sought”.

If the council lost an appeal, the authority would face a legal bill.