The former Stanton Ironworks site is currently allocated (zoned) in our ‘Erewash Borough Saved Planning Policies (July 2008)’ document under Employment Policy E4. This means we see the site as a major centre of regeneration for employment purposes, to serve the Borough and the wider region.
The Stanton site is ‘Brownfield land’. This means that the site currently contains existing development or has previously been developed on and is now derelict.
The Government want to ensure that we use our Brownfield land as efficiently as possible for development purposes. This is to take the pressure off having to use too much ‘Greenfield land’ instead.
Greenfield land is land which has not previously been developed on, such as agricultural fields and woodland, for example.
Part of the Stanton site has been derelict for many years, with no-one coming forward to redevelop it. We decided that it was our responsibility to find out what the main problems were with the site and what we could do to help. Unless we did this, the site would remain derelict and under-used. This is not acceptable for Brownfield land as it means that we may have to use Greenfield land instead.
The need for a Stanton Action Plan
We decided that we should produce an Area Action Plan for that part of the Stanton site that was derelict and was not being used. In 2005, when we started this Action Plan, Saint-Gobain was still a large employer on the site. The derelict area available for regeneration was not the whole site but covered approximately 120 acres, equivalent to 66 average sized football pitches!
We were successful in obtaining funding from Derby and Derbyshire Economic Partnership (DDEP) to help us to produce the Stanton Area Action Plan.
In December 2005, we commissioned Taylor Young consultants to help us produce an Area Action Plan. This involved extensive research and talking to local people, businesses and organisations.
The draft plan was produced in 2006 and showed us what the problems with the site were and proposed a new vision for its development. When examining how to get to the site, the consultants looked at rail, public transport and road transport options. In terms of roads, the draft Area Action Plan put forward three out of eight initial options for further consideration.
There was no preferred access route set out in the Area Action Plan and the next step for us was to test each of the proposed access routes in much more detail, to see which route was best, if any. To do this we would have to weigh up the impacts of each route on people, buildings, business and the environment, as well as looking at how much each option would cost.
The draft plan stated that employment would not come to the site unless the issues around transport and services could be resolved. The draft plan therefore recommended that, in order to regenerate the site and make it attractive to businesses and employers, there had to be other development linked to it. This other development would effectively finance some of the solutions to the significant transport and service problems.
The draft plan recommended that a portion of the site should be considered for residential development. This was a new proposal within the draft Area Action Plan, because before this the site had only been set aside for business uses.
At the beginning of 2007 we were told by the Government Office for the East Midlands (GOEM) to delay any further work on the Area Action Plan. This was because we needed to write our main planning policy document, called our ‘Core Strategy’ first. We are now writing our Core Strategy and have not worked any more on the Action Plan. The Action Plan is not adopted as Council policy and therefore has no status. Also, because of the reasons set out below, we will now not carry on with the Action Plan.
Ownership of the site
In the summer of 2007, Saint-Gobain told us that they were proposing to sell all of their land on the site, with some loss of jobs in the local area. With this news, we were very concerned about the future of the site and knew that we had to work with whoever bought the site, to ensure that we had a say in what they were going to develop on it. The land now available for redevelopment had increased to almost 500 acres. That’s 277 average sized football pitches!
‘Discussions took place during 2007 and 2008 with a couple of developers about buying the land. One of these companies called Spring Urban Regeneration, carried out a week long consultation exercise which they called a ‘Design Enquiry Week’ in June 2008, to talk about options for the site. This included talking about what type of development should go on the site, how it should look and whether a new road was needed. At the end of this Spring Urban Regeneration produced a newsletter summarising the outcomes of the discussions. The newsletter included a map showing the five road routes being considered.
Saint-Gobain, the owners of the Stanton site are now progressing proposals for the site.
We have no ownership control over any of the land within the Stanton site and therefore we are working with the owners to make sure that we have a say on how the site is developed.