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Bid for first 200 homes
in Rackheath eco town
by Ed Foss, Eastern Daily Press,
6 January 2010
A planning application for the first 200-home stage of
the Rackheath eco town should be submitted by June, the
promoters of the scheme have revealed.
Work on this 'exemplar' phase, which would be built at
the southern end of the development and feature different
types of energy saving technology to help demonstrate the
viability of the development, could start in December if
everything goes to plan.
And three months after that, in the spring of 2011, the
first homeowners could move into the eco homes. The 200
homes, some of which might have short term uses as offices
in advance of the wider development, would take approximately
two years to complete.
The update on the project timescale was provided by the
team at Norwich-based Building Partnerships, a regional
property development company heading the Rackheath scheme
along with Barratt Strategic and experts from the University
of East Anglia among others.
December is not only the target for starting work on the
ground on the exemplar houses, but also a target for registering
an outline planning application for the whole 4,000 home
site and associated infrastructure, added Mr Knowles.
This outline permission would be followed by phased detailed
planning applications, the first likely to be for 2,000
homes, with a target date of 2013 to begin building them.
The whole project would take between 10 and 15 years to
complete, said Mr Knowles.
Various factors could affect both timescales and the scale
at which development is planned, such as how much money
comes out of a Broadland District Council-led bid to government
for £28m of kick start funding, as previously reported
in the EDP in November.
And the exact level of response from local communities
to any planning application remains unknown, with a number
of petitions against the plans already in existence and
a vocal group called Stop Norwich Urbanisation (SNUB) engaging
actively at both community and political level.
When the planning application comes thorough it will be
put in the context of the government telling councils they
must identify sites where tens of thousands of homes could
be built by 2026 across Norfolk.
If the homes were built the current forecasts were that
the open market units (others would be offered as affordable
homes) would be sold at market value rather than at inflated
prices because of their eco status, said Mr Knowles, although
this situation was frequently reassessed as the project
developed.
More news at rackheatheco-community.com
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© 2009 Building Partnerships Ltd, Queen's House, Queen's Road, Norwich, Norfolk, NR1 3PL. Tel: 01603 664665. Fax: 01603 664668. |
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