The huge North Horsham residential and business development is at last underway with a second – albeit it far smaller – proposed residential development nearby continuing to cause controversy over possible traffic and congestion fears.
Now that they are established as being in charge of the development, Legal & General Capita are ploughing on with their plans for their massive development at North Horsham. The huge 2,750 home development and business park was originally kickstarted by Liberty Property Trust – the team who managed to gain outline planning permission from Horsham District Council for the build in the first place. The scheme was then acquired by Legal & General at the beginning of this year.
An enthusiastic Kerrigan Procter, chief executive officer of Legal & General Capital, said the company planned on introducing “a significant pipeline of housing for all ages, tenures and social groups.”
The move into such massive joint residential and commercial development by Legal & General marks the start of the company’s merging into larger private and public sector merged projects – many of which are aimed at helping deal with the government’s current huge housing crisis. A spokesman for the company pointed out that a multi-tenure approach to house building could help both with funding capacity and accelerated delivery.
James Lidgate, who is director of housing at Legal & General Capital, explained that the mixed move was “a milestone for both the business and house building more widely.’’ It was also a move in which the Government’s existing objective to enable and accelerate delivery of large-scale sites was able to be met.
He added: “By leveraging its long-term patient capital to provide a strong multi-tenure pipeline, Legal & General in a unique position deliver a site of this scale across a number of building phases to include not only build to sell homes but also long-term options such as Build To Rent and affordable housing which are less exposed to current market fluctuations.”
A relieved Ray Dawe, leader of Horsham District Council said the fact Legal & General Capita had stepped in to deliver the development showed “huge confidence” in the district and “in the combination of commercial and residential use on this site.”
Further Horsham housing planning application under consideration
But the Horsham house building bonanza doesn’t just stop there…plans to build up to 300 housing – as well as a huge chunk of ‘employment space’ – on the former Novartis pharmaceutical site are also being considered by Horsham District Council. But it’s not a popular decision as far as locals are concerned. They are worried about the increased traffic in the area, with fears it could lead to congestion. The decision whether or not to go ahead has been delayed by a month for the council to appoint an official to research the transport concerns.
The 18.6-acre site has been sitting empty for more than five years after original plans to turn it into a university campus or even a ‘renowned science park’ were abandoned.
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Author
Chris Kirkwood
