A planning obligation agreement has been sealed for a 4,500-home development in Bedfordshire, providing £16M towards county council improvements, and contributions to a trunk road upgrade and new railway station.
The development, on a former Second World War munitions factory, south of Bedford, at 384ha, is said to be one of the largest brownfield sites in England, and would provide homes for 10,000 people 5km from the centre of Bedford. A new four-platform railway station and the dualling of the ‘sub-standard’ A6 are part of the section 106 agreement package announced this week.
A joint venture between developer Gallagher Estates and landowner RWE npower will provide land and funding for the new station on the main line running to the west of the development. It would be located at the end of a new High Street, designed to allow a transport interchange to be created. Two kilometres of the A6 route running to the east of the development would be upgraded in a £10M scheme. The route is currently ‘sub-standard, with multiple access points’, and is predicted to reach its design capacity by 2010, even without the new development, according to the planning brief drawn up by the two local districts and the county council. Tricia Turner, leader of Mid Bedfordshire District Council claimed the agreement would create ‘a thriving community out of disused buildings and land’.
The development would halt ‘the creeping growth’ of local towns and villages, and had allowed ‘substantial improvements’ to the transport infrastructure to be secured. A design guide for each ‘village’ within the development would ensure that each was attractive, without being standardised. The planning brief had asked for the development to be laid out so that vehicles were deterred from speeding, with 20mph limits incorporated where appropriate.
Gallagher Estates plans to start planning the site for development in the autumn, now that the planning obligation deal is finalised, the planning authorities having been resolved to grant consent pending the section 106 agreement. Preliminary surveys have already been undertaken close to the A6 prior to the starting of work.
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