By Lucy Lord
Partner
Howes Percival LLP
ON 5 March 2018 the Government launched two consultations with a focus on planning and growth. The first on a ‘major overhaul’ of the National Planning Policy Framework which is intended to maximise use of land, strengthen protections for the Green Belt and put a greater emphasis on converting planning permissions into homes, and the second on the reform of developer contributions. Both consultations closed on 10 May 2018 and local authorities and the private sector alike await the Government’s response.
These consultations sit alongside the Government’s overarching vision for the East West Corridor, which recognises the importance of stimulating growth in the South East Midlands. The National Infrastructure Commission’s final report, published in November 2017, outlined the opportunities to create new communities, including plans to deliver one million new homes and with them 1.1 million new jobs in the area by 2050.
Locally in Northamptonshire, many hope that the recent consultations and continued focus on the East West Corridor will give a new life force to development in the county. Development in Northamptonshire has fallen behind schedule in the last few years. The demolition of Greyfriars in March 2015, intended to signal a new beginning for the town centre, remains empty with the housing element of the scheme recently being abandoned. Similarly the £10.8 million Vulcan Works, planned on Guildhall Street, Fetter Street and Angel Street, has also been delayed, as has the planned development of a supermarket and 19 homes on the old Chronicle and Echo site.
There have, however, been some promising signs for the property market in Northamptonshire in the first few months of 2018. In February 2018 brewery giant Marston’s was given the go-ahead for its proposal to construct a new pub and hotel on the Apex site on Northampton Road, and this month Norton Property Investments has sold one of its recently snapped up offices at Brooklands Court on Kettering Venture Park to national accountancy firm Haines Watts.
Hopefully the Government’s focus on planning and growth will see more developments kick starting in Northamptonshire along with the revival of those development projects left behind in 2017.
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