Redevelopment of former Syngenta site near Fernhurst signed off

Developer Comer Homes Group wants to knock down a number of offices and build 210 new homes alongside a cafe, retail and community use space.

The existing Pagoda building, which is currently the head office and showroom for Aspinal of London, would be retained but the Highfield building and several other structures would be demolished.

Permission was unanimously supported by the authority’s planning committee back in March.

A section 106 agreement, which sets out the benefits to be secured from the development, has now been signed by the applicant and national park authority.

Planning permission was then officially granted late last month.

Longfield House, located at the west of the site, occupied by Nicholson’s Auctioneers, does not form part of a planning application by Comer.

The proposed 210 dwellings are made up of 105 houses and 105 flats.

Of these, 43 dwellings for affordable housing, with 32 for social rent and 11 for shared ownership.

The majority of the new buildings, 79 houses and ten blocks of flats, would be three-storeys high, with a relatively small number, 26, of two-storey houses.

The scheme includes a 20-metre wide new coppice woodland running east to west across the site.

Meanwhile two new north-south green links would join up the Cooksbridge Meadow Nature Reserve with this new area of woodland.

A village square would also be created north of the Pagoda building, comprising three blocks of flats with the proposed cafe, retail and community hub units on the ground floor centred around a public space.

There would also be a village green offering a more formal open space.

Off-site footpath improvements works are also proposed. These would include a 1.5metre wide footway from the site to Fernhurst village, along the A286 with a new section from the site to the existing bus stop on the eastern side of the road.