Completed new homes in a Cornwall village have been boarded up and left empty after a planning stalemate, according to developers. 

Bridge View claimed council delays and abnormal costs have left it unable to deliver 33 homes in Calstock, including affordable housing. 

Bridge View in Calstock was originally given permission to build 33 homes, 15 of which were set to be affordable housing. One of the directors, Michael Wight, said his firm had allocated £2.8m, for 15 affordable homes but claimed council delays then cost the firm £1.2m in interest.

He accused the council of “weaponizing” legal planning agreements and “strangling the business cash flow” by blocking the sale of completed homes. Wight said the abnormal costs included the need to build a second road, a more complicated drainage system and a large retaining wall, the wall understood to have cost about £750,000. Coupled with the interest from the delays, he said their affordable homes budget was “eroded”.

The firm showed the BBC evidence that no new affordable housing operator wanted the homes and as a result they could not fulfil planning conditions. They received one offer from RentPlus, a rent with the option to buy model, but the firm was not within the council’s approved list as it was considered an intermediate operator.