Stansted-based developer City & Country has been recommended for planning approval for two residential schemes in Essex, comprising up to 300 homes on the edge of Stansted and up to 180 homes adjacent to Birchanger.
The Stansted scheme includes a shop, café, nursery, care home and land allocated for a village hall, while the Birchanger scheme proposes extensive new cycle and pedestrian links between the villages, alongside significant landscape enhancements designed to improve biodiversity and ensure the settlements remain separate.
Planning officers at Uttlesford District Council have recommended approval of City & Country’s proposals, highlighting the design quality, ecology and sustainable location of the schemes. The developments will also help address the shortage of affordable housing in the area, with demand expected to increase alongside the planned expansion of Stansted Airport and a new logistics park nearby.
The Planning Committee Report states:
“The Council’s Principal Urban Design officer describes the scheme as exemplary and exceptional, noting that it represents a genuinely place-specific and landscape-led response.”
The report also welcomes the creation of a substantial habitat bank and green corridor between the two settlements, noting that this “not only reinforces the retention of a meaningful and permanent landscape buffer between the settlements but plays a clear role in preventing their coalescence, thereby maintaining their distinct identities and the openness of the intervening countryside.”
City & Country hopes to build a collection of one to six-bedroom homes, 50% of which will be deemed affordable through rent and affordable home ownership, exceeding the local authority requirement and helping to provide homes for the 1,400 households on the council’s housing waiting list.
The plans also comprise 15km of new and enhanced pedestrian and cycle links and a habitat bank with ecological enhancements. This includes a community orchard and the reinstatement of historic woodland and hedgerows lost over time. Under the current proposals, the developments will each achieve a Biodiversity Net Gain massively in excess of 20%.
Simon Vernon- Harcourt, Design and Planning Director at City & Country, comments:
“We are really pleased to have been recommended approval for our proposals at Stansted Mountfitchet and Birchanger. The schemes have been designed to address local housing needs while delivering significant community and environmental benefits.”
“As someone who has spent most of their life living in Uttlesford, I wanted to do something really special. The vision for these sites is to create distinctive, contemporary rural communities that are intrinsically connected to the unique landscape and architecture of Essex.”
“As a local developer, with friends and our team members living in the local community, we are really proud of the scheme we have submitted and hope it is one the planning committee are able to endorse.”
The proposed homes have been designed by Stirling Prize winning architect Feilden Clegg Bradley Studios, with a focus on architecture that draws from the landscape and culture of Uttlesford and the wider region. The proposed homes would be built to Uttlesford’s latest sustainability standards to have net zero operational carbon. The schemes would also provide significant funding for sustainable transport, road improvements, education, health & emergency services.
City & Country is an award-winning developer headquartered in Stansted Mountfitchet, and responsible for delivering major schemes across Essex, including at Priory Fields, located adjacent to the St Osyth Priory estate; Sanderling Reach on Mersea Island and a flagship scheme in Manningtree.
For further information about City & Country, please visit https://www.cityandcountry.co.uk/