Yeovil homes could be unlocked by £500,000 from developers

The Abbey Manor Group has been seeking to deliver the Up Mudford urban extension, which will eventually comprise up to 765 homes, commercial space and various local amenities east of the A359 Mudford Hill in Yeovil.

South Somerset District Council provisionally agreed to grant outline planning permission for the scheme in October 2019 – despite hundreds of objections from local residents, who said the plans amounted to “urban sprawl”.

However, the legal agreements for the site were not signed before the onset of the phosphates crisis, meaning the development has been held up until additional mitigation could be agreed between Somerset Council and the developer.

Revised proposals for the urban extension (which include the agreed phosphates mitigation) will be debated by councillors towards the end of the month, with construction expected to begin by 2026 if permission is granted.

Somerset Council has now agreed to use up to £500,000 secured from other local housing developments to deliver the first pedestrian and cycling connections into the site, providing the first residents with easy access to local amenities.

In addition to the new homes, the Up Mudford site will include a community hall, a 65-bed care home, retail outlets, industrial units and an extension to the Primrose Lane Primary School, which lies within the neighbouring Wyndham Park estate.

The plans are one of more than 50 major housing development within the former South Somerset area which have been delayed as a result of the phosphates crisis, with the council working to clear the backlog through a range of different measures, including fallowing agricultural land and the creation of new wetlands.

The agreed phosphate mitigation for the Up Mudford site is expected to cost the Abbey Manor Group £1.5m – mitigation which must be delivered upfront, and which threatens the viability of the development as a whole.

To ease the situation, the council’s planning and transport sub-committee voted on Tuesday morning (October 8) to provide £500,000 secured from the community infrastructure levy (CIL) to fund the first pedestrian and cycling connections into the site.

CIL is collected from housing developers and can be pooled from different sites to fund major infrastructure projects, such as new schools, roads, doctors’ surgeries or regeneration projects (including the Yeovil Refresh).

Simon Fox, the council’s major projects officer, told the sub-committee: “One thing that has been identified is that where a scheme can afford something, it then becomes a question of when they can afford it.

“The developer will typically put some money upfront to prepare the site at their cost, and then use the receipts from housing sales to provide the additional infrastructure.

“We are talking to our highways teams about other pots of active travel funding and whether they can be used for this purpose.”

The Abbey Manor Group will have to spend around £17m upfront (on top of the phosphate mitigation) to get the development off the ground – some of which will be used to construct a new roundabout linking the site to the A359.

This new junction will be constructed to the north of the existing T-junction with Lyde Road, which will be upgraded later in the future using funding from the Wyndham Park estate.

The £500,000 in CIL payments will be combined with the developer’s own funds and used to deliver three key walking and cycling improvements over the construction period.

The money will be repaid by the developer in increments as the new homes are built out – similar to the agreement the council struck in January to deliver the access road for Wellington’s new railway station.

The first £70,000 would be used to provide an uncontrolled crossing on Lyde Road to give the first residents of the Up Mudford site a safer route to local schools and shops.

By providing this funding upfront, this crossing can be in place before the first home is occupied.

Once this is complete, much of the remaining funding will be used to complete a cycle route running along Lyde Road, which will eventually provide an unbroken link between the new homes and the town centre via Yeovil Pen Mill railway station.

This route was identified as a priority within the Yeovil local cycling and walking infrastructure plan (LCWIP) and is intended to link up with the existing route through Yeovil Country Park and into Middle Street, which will shortly be enhanced through central government funding.

Individual sections of this route have already been delivered, with a significant section being provided as part of the Wyndham Park construction and the council delivering an on-road section between Camborne Street and Sandringham Road (with further work being planned in the coming months).

The developer is expected to provide £50,000 upon commencement of its section of the route, and will thereafter provide £300,000 by the occupation of 450 homes, £120,000 after the occupation of 550 homes and £180,000 after the occupation of 650 homes.

Mr Fox said: “A CIL allocation facility on this would allow the continuation of current works on Lyde Road and deliver this strategic link many years ahead of what the cash-flow on the scheme can deliver.”

Finally, the Abbey Manor Group will construct the secondary access onto Lyde Road – which is currently expected to cost nearly £409,000, and must be delivered by the occupation of the 500th dwellings within the site.

Councillor Bill Revans, whose North Petherton division has seen significant housing growth in the last decade, welcomed the proposal but warned that the the developer would need to be held to account in the years ahead.

He said: “I’ve got some interesting experiences of urban extensions in the Bridgwater area – Stockmoor and Wilstock are very similar to this.

“Every first-time resident was given a bus pass so they could use public transport. The flaw in that process was that there was no bus serving the estate, and the roads were too narrow.

“In theory this will work, but we have to be very cautious about developers exploiting our good nature and resources issues.”

Once the walking and cycling elements of the site have been delivered, any additional CIL generated from the site will be prioritised for other local services – with the developer being expected to provide more than £5.5m for the expansion of Primrose Lane Primary School.

Additional CIL funding may be secured from a neighbouring development of 252 homes on the A359 Lyde Road, which was approved on appeal in March and is “likely to be built out at the same time” at the Up Mudford site.

The revised Up Mudford proposals will come before the council’s planning committee south when it meets in Yeovil on October 22 at 2pm.