The housing association behind a social housing development above a former Perth restaurant believe the £1 million project could attract people into the city centre.

Grant Ager, chief executive of Fairfield Housing Co-operative, said the new homes in St John’s Place, completed with development partners Kingdom Housing Association, “hit all the buttons”.

He described the building as “beautiful” and feels that by redeveloping the flats, this could bring more people into Perth’s city centre while providing affordable homes.

“The project costs just short of £1m,” Mr Ager told The Courier.

“We had £500,000 funding from the Scottish Government and the development tackles the city centre regeneration.

“It’s an attempt to put back some life in the city centre.

“There’s all this argument about Perth city centre being dead as a dodo, so this will hopefully put people back there.

“And there’s also the plan to build flats in Canal Street, Perth.

“If that goes ahead, that will mean around 200 people moving back into the city centre.

“There was the old argument that people are just not coming into Perth, but this solves part of that discussion.”

Mr Ager said the work on the St John’s Place flats was carried out through a “very tight” timescale and that the creation of the flats should “set the template” for other development to follow.

“We have this ‘above-the-shop’ initiative going on in Perth city centre, and this proves it can be done,” he added.

“The tenants are delighted to be moving into these homes.

“They have beautiful bay windows plus features, and were previously sold at the high end of the market. Having a stable housing market has allowed us to provide these opportunities, rather than before where we were priced out of them.

“These flats at St John’s Place were originally for private sale at the top end of the market.

“We managed to work it through the re-design that we could get eight flats here and are delighted with them.”

Braemore Estates carried out the development with FMC Construction, creating more than 20 construction jobs over a period of six months.