Plans to build more than 140 new homes on a derelict railway yard in Heaton look set to be approved this week.
Developer Keepmoat Homes wants to build a new estate on the former Heaton Down Yard, near Chillingham Road Metro station. The proposals are now due to come before city councillors on Friday for a verdict on whether the transformation of the disused site, next to Marleen Avenue, can go ahead.
The regeneration project would see 143 new homes built – comprising 12 apartments in a three storey block and 131 two or three storey houses. Ahead of Friday’s city planning committee meeting, council officials have recommended that the proposals are given the green light.
There have been 13 local objections against the proposed housing estate – including claims that the new homes will be “overbearing and oppressive” and concerns about overspill parking affecting surrounding streets. Heaton councillor John-Paul Stepheson said he was “broadly supportive in principle” of a redevelopment of a patch of land that has been a flytipping hotspot for years.
However, he called for more “ambition” from the proposals – saying that solar panels and other climate-friendly measures should be installed on the new houses. Coun Stephenson said: “These are the sorts of features which developments in the third decade of the 21st century should be offering as standard.”
While council public safety bosses also raised concerns about the noise that future residents could be forced to endure from the neighbouring mainline railway and Metro tracks, the planning department says that denying the scheme planning permission on those grounds could not “reasonably be justified”.
Planning officers’ report concludes: “The proposed development represents a sustainable form of development through: being fully inclusive; well- connected and accessible by sustainable modes of transport; being well designed to promote community cohesion, wellbeing and to reflect and enhance the area’s character and natural environment ; and being designed to reduce carbon emissions and being able to adapt to the effects of climate change.”
Keepmoat has previously said that new homes are “much-needed” in Heaton and that it has a “strong track record of breathing new life into brownfield land in the city”.
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