Manctopia: Billion Pound Property Boom viewers were left outraged after watching a local property developer insist he felt ‘no obligation’ to make his new homes ‘available to people on low incomes.’
Tim Heatley appeared on the third episode of the documentary series on BBC2 last night, where he said he felt ‘a sense of responsibility to do things that ruffle feathers’ and added he wanted to ‘do stuff that was a bit cheeky.’
The developer revealed he was spending £2 million a week building 2,000 new homes across the city to help meet the growing demand and insisted they were ‘all affordable’, but added: ‘How many are discounted to the market value? None.
‘We haven’t had to artificially reduce value of them or make them available to people on low incomes. We haven’t had to do that. There’s no obligation for us to do that. We haven’t done that at all.’
Viewers were outraged over the property developer, with one commenting: ‘How much of a t*** does this Tim fella look like #Manctopia, proper showtime giving it the big AM?’
Viewers of Manctopia: Billion Pound Property Boom were left outraged last night after watching Tim Heatley admit he had ‘no obligation’ to make houses ‘available to people on low incomes’
The local property developer said he did not feel he had to ‘artificially reduce the value’ of his apartments
Another wrote: ‘Tim virtually admitting he has no interest in building affordable housing. Someone else’s problem.’
On the programme, Tim explained how he was building on five sites across the city, ranging from home conversions to hotel developments.
One of his largest projects was developing a whole new neighbourhood called Campus, which was on the site of his old university and includes 500 apartments.
He admitted he got a third-class degree at university because ‘he didn’t really attend’, saying: ‘I was too busy buying and selling cars and should have been focusing on reading books and understanding about more about legal practice.
Social media users were left stunned by the developer’s attitude on the programme, with some saying he was ‘greedy’
‘But no regrets, I’m glad things turned out the way they did.’
He added: ‘We’ve got loads of different projects under construction. We’re spending nearly £2 million a week on construction.’
Tim went on to say that he felt ‘no obligation’ to make houses for people earning lower incomes, but added: ‘But do developers need to make contribution to those type of homes? Yes we do.’
He revealed he was interested in developing a park two miles out of the city centre and building 60 homes on the site, saying: ‘There’s going to neighbours and residents who complain. If I mention the houses word…even affordable homes can still cause huge controversy.’
He planned to get around the controversy by helping to develop an old mansion in the park for the community.
He asked for a community meeting to outline his plans for the park and the mansion where he was questioned about the amount of units in the area and how he planned to sell it.
Tim revealed he hoped to build 60 new homes on a park in the city centre and said he was keen to quash controversy for the project by redeveloping an old derelict mansion for the community
He timidly admitted there were 60 units on the property, leaving the community shocked, who said they ‘genuinely’ expecting him to say there might be 10 buildings on the park.
Tim insisted he was proposing ‘affordable rental homes’ but later admitted: ‘The mansion needs millions spending on it….if you just built 10, you’re not going to raise anywhere near enough to do the mansion.
‘Everyone wants to see affordable homes created but nobody wants them near your house.’
Tim’s plans were quickly met with outrage on social media, with users branding the developer ‘untrustworthy’ and saying his plan to redevelop the mansion was ‘blackmail’
Protests cropped up against the development, with one person saying: ‘It’s about balancing the rampant greed of developers with the needs of existing communities.’
Two months later, a community meeting was called and the council announced the decision that no homes would be built on the park.
At a community meeting at which the council announced Tim’s project wouldn’t go ahead, he said it was ‘a shame’
Tim called it ‘a shame’ that the project ‘failed’, saying: ‘People are scared of change.’
But it wasn’t long before he moved on to completed a deal to build an apartment block for key workers.
By the end of the programme, it emerged that out of the 3,000 homes he is building across Greater Manchester, 110 will be affordable.
He said: ‘We’ll make a lot less profit but we think that’s the price worth paying to try to show it is possible and to push boundaries and to be innovative in our approach.
‘It’s the same story across all the cities of the UK. Nobody wants to build affordable because it’s too hard, it’s too difficult to do, there’s no profit in it. Everyone just kicks the can down the road and tries to get somebody else to do the affordable.
Tim later told the camera ‘nobody wants affordable homes near their house’ and said the projects weren’t popular because they didn’t generate profit for developers
‘Until we get a grip of how to do it and how to do it at scale, the problem is going to persist.’
When a housing developer gets planning permission, they are often required to make a percentage of the homes they build officially ‘affordable, with the number ranging from around 30 to 50 per cent.
However, while it’s unclear if Tim deployed this tactic, some developers use a loop-hole to get out of this requirement by blaming changes in their costs or lower than anticipated house prices to claim they can’t make sufficient profits to build the number of affordable homes originally planned.
Many were stunned by the programme, with one saying: ‘Tim of #Manctopia literally contributing to a crisis of homelessness, yet portrayed as aspirational hero because he plays up his accent and donates his pocket change.’
Another wrote: ‘Tim may be from Salford but the guy is seriously out of touch with real people.
‘It feels like he just wants to jet-wash poor people out of the city and replace them with MediaCity employees who’ve moved up there.’