Long Marston Garden Village gets additional Government funding

Stratford-on-Avon District Council has been successful in its bid to secure £230,000 from the Government's Homes & Communities Agency to support capacity building within the Council to ensure the successful delivery of Long Marston Garden Airfield as a Garden Village.  

The funding will go towards increasing the bandwidth of the planning team including, where appropriate, the provision of extra staff and engagement of specialist consultants for the assessment of the Garden Village application.  

Cllr Daren Pemberton, Planning and Administrative Services Portfolio says: "This is excellent news.  Winning this additional funding will enable us to increase capacity and skill sets in the Planning service to meet the specific challenges of delivering a new garden village at the same time as the new settlement at GLH. This will be key to ensuring we have the right resources to deliver high quality new communities where residents will enjoy a high quality of life.

"Congratulations to everyone in the District Council's Planning team involved in putting this winning bid together."  


Background Information

Long Marston Garden Village will deliver around 3,500 dwellings, a village centre, two primary schools, a secondary school and around 13ha of employment land.  

Outline planning permission was granted for the first 400 homes in February 2017.  Work on the detailed design and layout, in tandem with the Masterplan SPD, has been undertaken resulting in the submission of a reserved matters application (ref. 17/03258/REM) which was received in October 2017.

A Steering Group and Working Group structure has been set up to act as a framework to ensure that all key stakeholders are fully involved in the pre-application processes for the South Western Relief Road (SWRR) and Garden Village.  Through these groups, the District Council is working with the developer, Cala Homes and key stakeholders including Warwickshire County Council.

The District Council has already allocated £100,000 within the Planning department's annual budget towards an 'Implementation Team' which is tasked with securing the delivery of all of the strategic sites allocated within its Core Strategy, residential and employment.  Long Marston Garden Village; the similar sized new settlement at Gaydon Lighthorne Heath; and the Stratford Canal Quarter regeneration project are the largest schemes within the team's remit. The Garden Village project is now gathering momentum and the additional funding will ensure the project progresses in a timely manner.