Hartford Homes is applying for planning permission (21/01567/B) for a demolition and the building of seven houses near the airport.

The developer is applying as a potential buyer of Netherby House, which has been on the market for £1.5 million along with its 2.5-acre plot.

Under the plans this five-bedroom house would be demolished and replaced with seven new dwellings.

These would be two-storey, five-bedroom houses, each of a different layout and including garages.

Seventeen trees would be removed, but then replaced with 57 native trees.

Hartford Homes said the houses will be built in ’traditional materials’ and will be ’highly energy efficient, incorporating air source heat pumps and solar panels with battery storage’.

Talking about the need for the housing, the company stated: ’There has been no new zoning of land in Castletown for new housing for over 10 years and there remains an acute shortage of housing, as identified by the report produced by Black Grace Cowley.

’The urgent need for more zoning was expressed by the inspector for the Area Plan for the South, 10 years ago in 2011.’

Access will be onto the Douglas Road, roughly opposite to the Aviation and Military Museum.

Similar plans were approved by the planning minister in 2014, and while this approval has since expired, Hartford Homes notes that as ’there has been limited change to the planning policy since the previous application’, these new plans should still be acceptable.