A major development on the Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire border has been left untouched for nearly a year following the owner's termination of the housebuilder's contract. The derelict mill site in Long Eaton was set to become the location of 109 new homes, but the building work stopped at least eight months ago.
The Bennett Street canal-side site was once home to the Britannia and Portland Mills, but now homes unfinished properties with missing windows that are empty inside, reports Derbyshire Live. The development, led by Futures Housing and Woodsome Estates, had once been moving at some pace - with around 20 to 30 houses built or nearly completed.
However, work then stopped abruptly and has not restarted since, leaving residents perplexed. The only movement now taking place on-site when the Local Democracy Reporting Service visited was a security guard and the rustling of plastic sheets covering gaps in homes destined for windows, doors and roofs.
Part-finished homes are exposed to the elements and residents worry about issues this may cause to future owners and if they may need to be knocked down. Much of the work facing onto Bennett Street itself, aimed at mimicking the former industrial mill complex, is finished or mostly finished but work within the site itself and facing onto the Erewash Canal is only in its infancy.
Erewash Borough Council approved the plans for the site in August 2020, with councillors keen to see it repurposed as the plot had been derelict since 2009 following a fire. Work to ready the plot for development involved the demolition of an historic chimney, to the disappointment of the borough’s MP Maggie Throup, in a spectacle witnessed by many in the community and heard for miles around.
Residents in Bennett Street were aware of a wide range of rumours regarding the stalling of the site’s development and said it came with both relief and frustration. Futures has confirmed to the LDRS that it is no longer working with Woodsome Estates, with a new contractor to be hired, and Woodsome told the LDRS that its contract was terminated in September 2022.
Guy Kell, a 44-year-old nursery nurse, has lived opposite the site for four years and welcomed the end of the disruption caused by the site, including traffic and noise, but said it now looked “a bit ghostly”. Maggie Mairura, a charity worker who has lived opposite the site for three years, said the site had been vacant for “at least eight months”.
She said: “You would have thought a third party would have come along by now to finish it. I am fed up of looking at it, we were supposed to be getting a modern housing development and instead we have this.
“It is awful when we are so in need of affordable housing and social housing, that nothing is happening. It must be coming up to about a year now (since work stopped). I don’t miss the traffic, that was disruptive, but it is just such a shame to see nothing being built when people in Long Eaton desperately need housing. It is just sad.
“We were supposed to have young people and families living opposite us and instead we have this. From this side (Bennett Street) it actually doesn’t look as bad but when you look from the canal side you can see how much work needs to be done. You would have thought someone would have taken it on by now. It might be nearly a year now since work stopped.”
Eden Silverward, 28, who also works for a charity, said: “It has been a long while since they stopped, they just left and didn’t come back and now there is just a security guard. It is quite frustrating, it was coming along pretty quickly and now it looks a bit of a state, but it is nice that the disruption stopped.”
Ho Yuen, a 33-year-old warehouse worker, moved to Bennett Street in September – 10 months ago – and said work had already stopped on the site. "It is a waste. If I was wanting to buy a house and I saw this, with people waiting to fix it, I would be annoyed. If another company comes along to finish it they might do things differently and things might get missed. It is not good.”
A spokesperson for Futures Housing said: “We are no longer working with the developer who initially started work on the site at Bennett Street. We have been through a tender process to appoint a new contractor for this project. When they have fully inspected the works to date, the next step is to agree the current build cost to complete the project.
“We hope that work will begin again before the end of the year. We don’t wish to provide more details about why our relationship with the previous developer at Bennett Street ended as this is commercially sensitive information. However we can confirm that we have met all our contractual obligations."
A spokesperson for contractors Woodsome Estates said: “We were the appointed contractor in August 2020 and we started before coronavirus >Covid, and carried on the build through Covid and post-Covid, and our contract was terminated in September 2022.”
