RESIDENTS of Skerne Road are increasingly concerned about the affordable housing and hotel development scheme.

With the current scheme proposing the old Kingston PowerStation to be transformed into affordable housing and a hotel on Skerne Road, Kingston, residents are worried about what affect this will have on their area.

Clive Howard, 34, Web Consultant/ Chairman of Residents Association said: “The housing scheme will obviously be a pain for some residents what with the noise and so on that the builders will make. In the long run though it means that we lose the view of the PowerStation, which is rather ugly and in the end we will get a better view. If you are going to live in the middle of a town or city then there is always going to be building works or noise and you just have to accept that and people who live here always knew there would be building works.”

Mr. Howard continues: “The thing that residents are most concerned about is the affordable housing and the fact that most residents would prefer more housing rather than a hotel. Even though the developers have been very good with answering our concerns, we do have a particular building scheme here and the affordable housing could cause a problem to that. Here we have an opportunity for people to live in a nice place and there should not be an opportunity to trash it, it definitely has its challenges.”

The Conservative Councillor Dennis Doe also expressed concern over the amount of affordable housing who prefers the housing views of the Kingston Churches Housing Association 40 years ago and Quadrant who were one of the long serving housing organisations. They both believed that mixing housing for those with little income with those who were well off encouraged community spirit.

He said: “I was provoked by the adamant statement that Quadrant would find it easier to manage if all the “affordable” housing, with them as the social landlord, were put together. I simply want the council to consider this “management” issue. Are they happy in making it easier for Quadrant to manage their tenants, while maybe not providing an obvious encouragement for the whole housing estate to be an integrated community or should they be helping to encourage the whole-site community, even if that made Quadrants' management job more difficult?”

Other residents are more concerned with the amount of noise the building works will produce.

Xiulwg Zhang, 21, who is a student said: “I am not concerned that they are building affordable housing across the road from where we live, we have 24 hour security here. What I am more concerned about is the noise the builders will cause in the mornings. We already have building going on down the street and they start making noise at 8 am every morning and it’s really annoying, so it is a little worrying that there will be more building works and more noise soon.”