Albyn Housing Society is building six new affordable homes in Grantown at the rear of the Grant Arms Hotel and will be handing keys over to tenants this autumn.

The much-needed two bedroom flats come equipped with the latest technology to reduce carbon emissions and promote energy savings. The new homes, which are available for affordable rent, boast royal connections with Queen Victoria and Prince Albert having visited the hotel in 1860.

The project marks the most recent in a series of small-scale developments that the Invergordon-based Housing Association has completed in the Grantown community over the last 20 years.

These have included refurbishment of some of Grantown’s oldest historic properties in the Square, together with numerous mixed tenure new-build housing developments which have contributed to the development of the area.

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Calum Macaulay, Albyn's Chief Executive, said: "In Grantown, because we have traditionally worked in partnership with local builders who have a strong sense of their local community and take huge pride in their work, we have developed an important role in new housing provision in the town as well as contributing to the built environment."

Local contractor Colin Lawson builders, a local business run by a Grantown family, contributed to the design and built the Grant Arms development. Mark Lawson said: "It has been an extremely successful development. There have been some major challenges over the last few years to retain staff and invest in our business. Small pockets of land like Strathspey Gardens are becoming a rare commodity but with the huge demand in affordable housing, sites like these are becoming extremely important to us. Working on this development has allowed us to employ a significant number of local people and also take on local joiners, plumbers and brickies apprenticeships."

In partnership with the Scottish Government and Highland Council, Albyn is currently on site with a programme of over 200 new mixed tenure homes across the Highlands and was a major winner of the prestigious recent 2011 Scottish Home Awards including the coveted Small Affordable Housing Development of the Year.

(CD/KMcA)