£21m land deal to create homes bid
Monday 21st September 2009, 5:00PM BST.
A £21 million deal to build more than 100 homes on eight acres of redundant hospital land in Shrewsbury has been struck
Plans are due to be expected imminently for the former Royal Shrewsbury Hospital South site in Mytton Oak Road after The Homes and Communities Agency and CALA Homes (Midlands) exchanged contracts for the development.
CALA will apply for detailed planning permission this month to build 112 one, two, three, four and five-bedroom homes on the site.
The deal, subject to planning approval, sees the national housing and regeneration agency and the housebuilder working together on the 7.89 acre brownfield site.
Wrekin Housing Trust will also be involved with the project which will feature 32 affordable homes as well as public open space and a children’s play area.
CALA Homes plans to start building on site in the middle of next year, with the first new homes ready for occupation in early 2011.
Paul Spooner, regional director for the HCA West Midlands, said: “Through close partnership work with our development partner CALA Homes and the local authority we are delighted to support this high quality development that will help to address the local need for more affordable homes.”
CALA Homes (Midlands) decision to purchase the land follows a strong performance, with sales running at more than one new home per week on each of its developments.
“Thanks to our brand and reputation for building quality new homes, we continue to sell strongly on our developments across the Midlands and we feel that the time is now right to start acquiring land again for future developments,” said Darren Humphreys, managing director.
“We will build architect-designed, spacious and attractive family homes, which we know will appeal to people already living in the Copthorne area, and those looking to relocate there.”
Matt Gallagher, land director for CALA, said the purchase was part of the company’s strategy to replenish its land bank in the region.
By Russell Roberts
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I wonder how many houses they’d be able to build on the site of the Princess Royal in Telford if they succeed in closing it?
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this can only improve the visual appearance of the area which is good, im suprised though only 100 homes on 8 acres, this is VERY low density – surely we should get more from this site, put some flats in for the hospital workers, not all are doctors on £100 k pa you know, my mate is a porter there and even doing night shifts does well to take home £15 k in a year, some people earn more in benefits than that, we should put more 1 bed flats on this site too
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im suprised though only 100 homes on 8 acres, this is VERY low density – surely we should get more from this site, put some flats in for the hospital workers, not all are doctors on £100 k pa!
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this will improve the visual appearance of this area no end, so a good thing IMO
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Yet another low density red brick box housing estate probably. Yawn.
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better than derelict ww2 huts ?
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I sincerely hope the quality will be higher than the new houses built on the old Radbrook Hotel site.
Having walked through the Shrewsbury Business Park this morning I was incredibly impressed with the variety and thought given to the aesthetics of the site. Why can’t we have a housing development built to that standard of design?
Please, no more pseudo – Victorian or period pastiche. We have post – war houses built of pre-fabricated panels in that area, which are still today successful, adaptable homes.
Built to present day standards of insulation with maybe shared ground source thermal heating, water storage and solar panels we could have a healthy, sustainable, attractive award winning development on this site.
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my godd eva how can you say that! pre fabs are oK1!!??? have you been to monkmoor, they are horrid homes, what is wrong with trying to build in the style of the past, all the columned banks and such are neo-classical trying to emulate the ancient greeks, all the beautiful timber framed victorian homes designed to look like their Tudor mansions they are loverly homes, and command a market premium, people love period homes, they were built to last then too
homes should be sympathetic to surroundings and in Shrewsbury that means looking old, i agree energy efficiency is important though
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about time too
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they will never be truly ‘green’ homes as they are on the fringe of town thus neccessitating driving, i can forsee traffic problems here, its just about beyond walking distance for most folk, so it will result in alot of driving
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I can think of a whole estate of ex council, pre-fabricated houses near the hospital built post WW11 that is providng quality housing and that are well cared for homes today.
Many Victorian houses were very poorly constucted and are not here today.
Just thinking of the vile fake columns at the end of Julian Friars. They speak volumes for not building with modern materials in the style of the past.
What does sympathetic to the surrounding area mean? The Copthorne hospital area is a mixture of between the wars housing, older Victorian Villas, cottages, recent non-descript bungalows and executive homes, wide and varied styles of local authority houses.
Pre-fabricated houses are the norm in many European countries and they can be built to look any period you like. I would prefer to see them excite the people living in them with plenty of light and spaces provided for the way that we live today.
Do we really need to build coach houses when we use cars?
Do we really want artificial chimneys on our roof?
Do we really want to sentimentalise the past?
Genuine old houses can be wonderful to look at architecturally,spacious or cosy, quirky and characterful but also draughty,costly to run, badly arranged and expensive to repair.
We constantly put old next to new every day and from a design point of view honest quality old looks better against honest quality new.
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great – “affordable homes” that means more chaves are moving to Shrewsbury then
Labours failure has created a broken britain, rotten to the core, and these people need to be put to work not given cheap houses
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