FPCR’s involvement in regards to the Government’s recent public announcement of 14 Garden Villages.

FPCR are providing the masterplanning, urban design, landscape, ecological and arboricultural services for one of the first Garden Villages at Spitalgate Heath in Lincolnshire. This will deliver up to 3,700 new homes, new schools, shops and community facilities and a network of new parks and green spaces alongside the River Witham.

In addition, FPCR are the landscape and ecological consultants for Long Marston Garden Village on behalf of CALA Homes. This project will redevelop the former airfield as a new freestanding community located 3 miles south of Stratford upon Avon. The Garden Village will ultimately create 3,500 new homes, new schools, a neighbourhood centre and 13ha of employment land together with significant green space to cater for a variety of recreational uses as well as ecological needs. Key to the proposals is a major new relief road which will cross the River Avon to connect the development directly with Stratford. Extensive Ecological Surveys have been undertaken and a Landscape and Visual Assessment as well as Green Infrastructure Plans prepared. FPCR also assisted the client team with the EiP of the Stratford-on-Avon District Core Strategy. Consent is already in place for a first phase of 400 homes.

The practice are also working on other Garden Village proposals which will emerge during 2017. These include sites in Leicestershire, Derbyshire and Northamptonshire, all of which are free standing new communities which will deliver in the order of 3500 new homes each together with the necessary infrastructure to create thriving independent settlements which relate well to existing towns and villages.

(See the published BBC News article here)