The new East Midlands mayoral authority has secured just over £16.8m of Government funding to help deliver 1,479 stalled housing schemes on previously developed land known as brownfield sites across the region.
Councillors at the East Midlands Combined County Authority’s inaugural Investment Committee meeting on September 30, at Chesterfield Town Hall, on Rose Hill, welcomed the Brownfield Land Fund money which has already been earmarked to support 12 projects.
EMCCA spokesperson Tom Goshawk told the meeting: “We were looking to target around about 1,000 homes to be delivered on stalled residential sites that weren’t coming forward for a variety of reasons such as viability and infrastructure gaps.”
He added: “In total, there are 12 projects that are coming forward as part of it to utilise the funding that we have got with the spread of projects across the region off the basis of that exercise and in total delivering 1,479 homes as part of the project.”
Mr Goshawk also said: “So we are hoping to see some positive housing growth across various brownfield sites in the area.”
EMCCA and Homes England which supports affordable housing have been working together to unlock the delivery of the stalled residential sites with the aim of creating high quality homes and thriving sustainable places.
The authority secured the £16,828,488 Brownfield Housing Fund money from the Government to support the delivery of between 1,000 and 1,400 new homes on brownfield sites with the money to be spent by March, 2026, and for work to commence by the same deadline.
Bidding for a share of the money attracted 50 applications and a number of approved schemes were reported back to the EMCCA board.
EMCCA has identified 12 projects covering 1,479 homes that can now move to the next phase and they will need to submit a business case to the EMCCA board for approval.
The number of houses and the locations include: 18 at Miller Road, Mastin Moor, Chesterfield; 58 at Welbeck Gardens, Bolsover; 109 on land off Bridge Street, Langley Mill, in the Amber Valley; 11 at the former Argos, Bath Street, Ilkeston; 112 at Castleward, Derby; 50 at St Peters Street, Derby; 33 at Mansfield Road, Derby; 322 at The Island Quarter, Nottingham (Phase 1); 382 at Queens Road, Nottingham (Phase 2); 309 at Hawton Lane, New Balderton, Newark and Sherwood; 45 at Trent Basin West, Nottingham; And 30 at Leviers Court, Arnold, Gedling.
Mr Goshawk said: “We are hoping to see some positive housing growth across various brownfield sites in the area.”
Brownfield sites include land that has been previously developed or not used and which may be contaminated from previous industrial use and it may require cleaning or land remediation before it can be used for housing.
The funding will help with site acquisition, site remediation, off-site and on-site infrastructure, delivery of new homes, creating public realms, and providing support for the delivery of capital projects.
Derbyshire County Cllr Carolyn Renwick, who chaired the EMCCA meeting, said: “It’s always really important to get that accelerated funding.
“We are all aware that parts of our industrial heritage have meant that we have got a lot of potential brownfield sites but we cannot build these out without Government intervention.”
Cllr Renwick pointed out some bigger brownfield sites like the former colliery site at Markham Vale, in Derbyshire, which hosts a business park, and the remediated former coking site at The Avenue, in Wingerworth, Derbyshire, which hosts new housing cost many millions of pounds to clean and restore.
She added that she hopes the EMCCA Mayor, Claire Ward, can continue to lobby the Government for extra investment for identified brownfield sites that are ‘just not viable without intervention’ because this would ‘massively solve our housing projects’.
EMCCA includes representatives from Derbyshire County and Derby City councils, and Nottinghamshire County and Nottingham City councils, and was launched this year under a devolution deal with a guaranteed funding stream of £1.14bn to be spread over 30-years with devolved powers around transport, housing, skills and adult education, economic development and net zero targets.
