LDA is delighted to confirm submission of a full application for the former Hawthorn Leslie Shipyard. The site has a rich and proud history and is to be renamed Kelly’s Yard in honour of HMS Kelly, Lord Louis Mountbatten’s K-Class Destroyer in WWII.
Please see below a link to the Design & Access Statement accompanying the application, which provides interesting detail on the site’s history, architectural vision and design process. This leads to full details of the proposed new community with plans and images.
We feel that we have addressed the many issues raised by planning officers, and development of this site for 448 beautifully designed new homes in a fantastic new ecology- and landscape-led riverside community would be a tremendous boost for Hebburn. We have incorporated a range of accessible home types to accommodate a range of income levels in line with housing need. Homes will start under £100,000.
We have further allowed a very significant sum for local facilities, including education, highways, local amenities, up to £2M.
This site is significantly constrained in terms of very high costs of demolition, remediation and reclamation, and in an area where sales values are modest relative to high construction costs, viability is also constrained, which is why a scheme has not come forward as yet over decades.
This development would also save 30 acres of greenbelt land from residential development, and all sides of the political spectrum ask developers to prioritise brownfield sites. The site has been redundant for several decades, is not viable for commercial development, and we’ve incorporated clearcut evidence to this effect. Furthermore Local Authority ecologists have confirmed that the site can no longer be used to access the river due to mud flats and salt marshes which have evolved over years of dereliction.
The LDA scheme embraces these ecological features, allowing them to extend within our scheme and link with new landscape features. We’ve also designed the scheme to create an acoustic buffer from the A&P site, albeit the dry dock is not viable and the adjacent area of the A&P site has not seen use in decades. The site is 12 minutes by Metro to both Newcastle and South Shields centres.
The development will incorporate substantial outdoor amenity opportunities to assist with the trend towards home working. We would like to incorporate a museum to the site’s history, cafe, restaurant, bike repair shop and the like in the three amenity building areas, uses that will create a sense of community and become places for people to enjoy and socialise even when working from home. The landmark pier and shipbuilding features will be retained and incorporated within the outdoor amenity spaces.
We have extensively consulted the local community and received tremendous support for redevelopment of this dangerous and ugly eyesore. Furthermore there will be considerable economic benefits flowing from the scheme. We intend to employ local contractors and hundreds of jobs will be created over several years by this £100M investment into the Hebburn economy. There are far greater challenges to this site than with other more traditional housing schemes, yet the design is at such a level to create a high quality new development very different to other suburban housing development in Hebburn.
We hope you will see from the Design & Access Statement how much care and thought has been invested in creating a wonderful and vibrant landmark community in Hebburn. We very much hope that the local community will support LDA’s attempt to bring this highly contaminated and dangerous eyesore back into good community use.
Download The Design and Access Statement
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