Council boss eyes relaxation of North East green belt

The North East green belt may be reviewed, the Leader of Gateshead Council has said. Speaking at our Newcastle event Cllr Martin Gannon told delegates that unless the authority allocates more housing sites it will pick up the costs of population growth without benefitting from the resulting increased council tax revenues.

Responding to a question about whether the green belt should be adjusted, he said: “We may have to revise our core strategy and we may have to identify more sites because if we don’t house the population of Gateshead in Gateshead and they live in Durham or Northumberland they will have to travel here for their jobs. We will pick up all the external costs, all the pollution and all the air quality issues.”

Whilst the council is keen to regenerate brownfield land in the borough’s urban areas, volume housebuilders lack appetite for such sites, he said: “You can’t move in centre of Gateshead for brownfield sites but housebuilders aren’t interested in building homes in central Gateshead because they can’t sell them for £350,000.”
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Gannon said the authority wants to stimulate development in order to protect council services by expanding its tax base. Gateshead has suffered the seventh worst cuts of any English council, and they’re facing a £20m deficit within the next three years on its adult social care budget along unless it can find new sources of revenue, he said: “The financial challenges are daunting but the only solution is to be ambitious: austerity is not the way to grow the economy.”

Spending cuts create a ‘downward spiral’, Gannon said: “We need to create a virtual spiral. Gateshead Council has no choice. We can’t provide services unless we grow and invest in the future. Inevitably if people are in employment, they are less dependent on council services and we not only benefit from rent income and business rates, the cost of providing services goes down.”

Gannon told delegates that new projects in the pipeline include a new arena, conference and exhibition complex on Gateshead Quay. Plans are due to be submitted later this year for the scheme, which is being developed in partnership with ASK and Patrizia.

The schedule for the centre, which is intended to generate revenues that can be used to reduce the council’s financial support for the neighbouring Sage Concert Hall, had been delayed by the takeover of the proposed operator SMG. It’s now due to open in 2023.

He said the new food and retail units due to open along the riverfront would supply business rates revenue that can help to support local services in the future: “It can be difficult to persuade people, when you are having to reduce libraries and services, about spending money on a conference and exhibition centre. The issue of course is that this is capital investment in the future of Gateshead.”

Elsewhere in the borough, Gannon said the Riga speculative office building that the council is developing in the Baltic Quarter will be available for occupation by February next year.

Gateshead Council is also looking at the next phase of the Follingsby International Enterprise Park, a former college site on the edge of the town. Infrastructure work for the £120m logistic and industrial development should be complete in April, enabling construction to begin this summer.

At the Metrocentre, he said that plans by the out of town mall’s owners Intu for 1,000 new homes should be complete within the next 18 months. The Council has earmarked the MetroGreen site next to the shopping centre for 3,500 homes in an area action plan that is due to be adopted in 2021.

Neil McMillan, Managing Director at iMpeC Group, said construction is due to commence in ‘the next few months’ on the first phase of its Milburngate development in Durham city centre with the company assessing tenders from prospective contractors. In the run up to Christmas the firm signed a £100m forward funding agreement and secured the final amendments to its planning application for the site.

McMillan said the company’s first letting at Milburngate had been the Everyman cinema, which he described as ‘really important’ for setting the tone of the development.

Phase one of the scheme also includes a 92-bed hotel, 153 BTR apartments, a 54,000 sq ft speculative office building together with ten restaurants and bars around the cinema that will front onto the river.

Delivery is however ‘complicated’ by a number of challenges including a 20m high retaining wall, a history of gas works and asbestos as well as the planning constraints imposed by its nearness to the World Heritage Site centred around Durham Cathedral.

Keith McDougall, Operations Director – Residential at The High Street Group, told delegates that construction is progressing well on its project to build what will be Newcastle’s tallest building when complete. The centre core of Hadrian’s Tower is already up to level 11 of the proposed 27-storey building.

McDougall said construction has just commenced on Middlewood Plaza, a 127-apartment scheme that High Street is developing with United Living.

Further afield he confirmed that the group was targeting the summer of 2019 to secure planning submission for 737 apartments in phase one of the Charter, a development located within Birmingham’s new Southern Gateway. In addition the company is planning to deliver 15 to 20 hotels across the north of England under its Hotel 52 budget boutique brand over the next five years, aiming to compete in the budget to mid-markets.

Joanne Peacock, Regional Category Specialist at North East Procurement Organisation (NEPO), told delegates that the body will be renewing its highway technical surveys and surfacing renewal construction framework this year – in October and December respectively.

April 2020 will also see the renewal of both NEPO’s civil engineering & infrastructure work and building & civils materials frameworks.

Iain Garfield, Acting Head of Estates for Newcastle University, said its building plans had started to accelerate in the last three to four years.

Helen Cadzow, Owner of Cadzow Estates, said the region would weather the national economic and political turbulence: “We’ve been facing recession Romans left so it’s no big deal. We will get on with it and make it happen.”
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