Nottingham set to approve regeneration of long derelict site

Nottingham City Council is gearing up to approve plans for the regeneration of a major site in the city’s Eastside, which has been derelict for 30 years, our event heard.

Paul Seddon, Director of Planning & Regeneration at the council, told delegates that new plans for ‘The Island’ site are due to be presented to the authority’s planning committee in April, and he would be recommending go ahead for the proposals, which include up to 1,000 new homes, significant office space, a linear park and the restoration of the site’s heritage buildings.

Seddon also defended Nottingham’s support for purpose-built student accommodation, adding that while these developments tend to be high profile due to their scale, concerns that the city has experienced oversupply of student housing are misplaced.
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Pointing to the authority’s own surveys showing that vacancy rates in purpose-built student accommodation had ‘never’ risen about 1.5% over the last five years, Seddon said: “We haven’t even kept pace with growth of universities’ need for additional student accommodation. We will continue to promote good quality student accommodation in the right places.”

Seddon said that Nottingham wants developers to provide value for money accommodation, which will compete on price, allowing shared homes to be restored back to family housing.

The council planning chief said the conversion of much of the city’s lower grade office stock into student accommodation had proved a ‘double edged sword’ as although it helped remove much of the city’s pipeline of available office stock, it had ‘helped to drive up rents’ which had in turn sharpened incentives for bringing forward development in the city.

In Nottingham city centre Sir Robert McAlpine have started work on the redevelopment of the intu’s Broadmarsh retail centre. The scheme will be a ‘sensible reimagining’ of the seventies shopping centre with a shift away from retail space to food and drink, with a new cinema also set to be added.

Broadmarsh’s bus station and car park are both being demolished as part of the wider regeneration of the area, with Galliford Try being appointed to build a replacement which would house a state-of-the-art children’s library.

Seddon added that Nottingham is seeing ‘substantial interest’ in built-to-rent (BTR) schemes with a total of 500 apartments on site at the Hicking development, while Network Rail is working up plans for 350 flats in the JV with Legal & General.

One site near the city’s mainline railway station had recently attracted 38 bidders, contributing to what he described as a ‘tangibly different’ sense of confidence in the city.

The authority’s own land pipeline comprises a mix of ‘straightforward’ sites which can be disposed over the next 1-2 years and more complicated ones where it will undertake longer-term joint ventures in collaboration with others.

While the authority is keen to find locations where development can be maximised, it also values Nottingham’s heritage, he said: “People want to come to Nottingham to feel Nottingham’s incredibly rich heritage: the quality of buildings is extraordinary.”

Stephen Barker, CEO of the Nottingham’s Creative Quarter Company, however urged councillors and officers to be even more ‘adventurous and ambitious’ about new architecture in the city: “We could be going for funky. It’s no more expensive to put multi-coloured cladding on a building than fake bricks. Let’s have funky interesting stuff in the mix so people can imagine where we would like Nottingham to go and not just where it has come from.”

His organisation hopes to encourage more jobs in the digital sector rather than the creative because the former looks set to provide a stronger source of future jobs. But attracting talented staff to Nottingham is ‘challenging’.

Barker said: “One of our challenges is graduate retention and talent acquisition. We’re competing with the likes of Leeds and Manchester to attract talent outside of London. We don’t do as well as those two in attracting talent and that’s got a lot to do with perceptions about the size of our economy.”

He added that while there are ‘dozens’ of proposals in the pipeline for co-working space, the launch of Nottingham’s first such scheme this month will show whether appetite exists for it.

Allen Graham, Chief Executive of Rushcliffe Council, told delegates that CWC Developments’ project to deliver 20ha of employment land and 3,000 new homes at the Fairham Pastures urban extension should have received detailed permission and be on site by the end of this year. Rushcliffe are also working heavily with Nottingham City Council to extend the city’s tram network to the site, which is locations to the south of Clifton.

He said: “We don’t want it to be just distribution, we want it to be higher value than that. It’s about creating the right type of place in the right location that creates a statement about living in Nottingham.”

The local authority is also hoping to bring forward a major employment land development and 1,000 homes in the Nottinghamshire market town of Bingham, and they’re working with neighbouring authorities to bring forward sites for development: “We’re trying now to work with neighbours on how we can help them, looking for packages that don’t just deliver in Rushcliffe but in other parts of Nottinghamshire so we get a balanced approach that doesn’t widen the gap.”
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