Millennium Communities Programme

Background

The Millennium Communities Programme was set up by English Partnerships in conjunction with Communities and Local Government (CLG) to create seven exemplar sustainable communities across the UK. It is anticipated that the programme will bring forward over 9,000 EcoHome Excellent standard homes providing inspiration to both the development industry and the general house-buying public. Over 1,200 homes have been completed to date with a further 1,000 under construction.

The ethos behind the Millennium Communities is to provide a range of high quality and innovative homes to facilitate an environmentally friendly lifestyle. Each of the seven new developments will include green open spaces, wildlife areas and recreation facilities to provide public and private spaces where people want to live and community life flourishes.

Good transport links, shops and community facilities are a priority and planners have been tasked with giving as much thought to the needs of pedestrians and cyclists, as they do car-users. These concepts do not mean that all the communities look the same. Each one has been individually master-planned and designed to take account of the local environment.

The Programme is attracting some of the UK’s most talented architects and successful developers, whose challenge it is to create an exciting new vision for a place – one that helps the area to attract more opportunities and investment and establish flourishing neighbourhoods with bright prospects.

Who is choosing to live in these new communities?

The Millennium Communities are being designed to include different types and sizes of home, to attract a wide range of residents and demonstrate that there is definitely a market for these homes.

Allerton Bywater in Leeds, for example has generated initial enquiries from people living nearby who were attracted by the new and exciting development work in their area. However, enquiries are now starting to come from people who are attracted by the environmental credentials of the development; people who want to buy into this high quality lifestyle. Home Zones, Secured by Design, Sustainable Urban Drainage systems, live-work facilities and quality children’s play facilities all contribute to the overall offer. The close proximity of work opportunities and the newly refurbished community facilities also make Allerton Bywater an attractive and desirable place to live.

The sites

There are seven Millennium Communities:

• Greenwich Millennium Village, London
• Allerton Bywater Millennium Community, near Leeds
• New Islington Millennium Community, Manchester
• South Lynn Millennium Community, King’s Lynn
• Telford Millennium Community
• Oakgrove Millennium Community, Milton Keynes
• Hastings Millennium Community

English Partnerships has taken the lead on cleaning-up the sites, piloting new remediation techniques and demonstrating to developers that difficult brownfield locations can be worthwhile, pursuable and profitable ventures.

The locations span a variety of environments including a market town (South Lynn), a seaside town (Hastings), a city estate (New Islington), a new town (Oakgrove), and a larger urban village (Telford). In each location, English Partnerships works closely with local partners to help ensure that the Millennium Community will benefit local people by providing new job opportunities, facilities, education and access to training.

Each Millennium Community has been developed around a different theme to showcase particular approaches to sustainable living. These include:

• Integrated transport at Hastings
• Life-long learning in Telford
• Community integration at South Lynn and high quality public realm
• Urban design at New Islington, Manchester.

Providing community facilities in the early stages has proven to be a particularly important factor in the success of the Programme to date. These facilities allow us to work with local people and build links with existing communities which helps to prepare the way for new development.

At Allerton Bywater Millennium Community near Leeds, new amenities include a refurbished former infant school providing childcare and a library. The transformed Miners’ Welfare Hall is the focus for a wide range of activities, bowling, cricket, tea-dances, a luncheon club and a skate park.

The standards

The Millennium Communities developments have very specific environmental and quality standards, which developers are required to meet.

For example these quality benchmarks set the bar for:

• energy efficiency
• water consumption
• building defects
• recycling
• health and safety on site.

To ensure that the Millennium Communities keep at the cutting edge, these standards are updated with each new development agreement. Later phases will be updated to meet the standards in the Code for Sustainable Homes at an appropriate level.

The standards incorporate performance data in each of the following:

Eco Homes Excellent and BREEAM Excellent Reduced energy consumption Reduced embodied energy Renewable energy Reduced water consumption Reduced domestic waste Reduced construction waste Lower defects Reduced snagging items Better noise reduction

Improved space standards in line Housing Corporation Affordable Housing ‘A’ rated white goods Car clubs and cycle facilities Sustainable building materials Life time Homes Secure by design Improved site Health and Safety IT enabling

Millennium Community standards have been achieved in a wide range of house types from the high density urban apartments at Greenwich Millennium Village designed by internationally renowned architect Ralph Erskine, to the more traditional family homes at Allerton Bywater.

All community or commercial buildings within the Millennium Communities also have to achieve very high standards and all new public buildings need to meet the requirements of the Building Research Establishment’s BREEAM Excellent. This is particularly evident at the new community centre in Hastings, which has a number of innovative construction methods including a green roof. Similarly, the school at  Greenwich was one of the first BREEAM Excellent schools in the country and a state of the art health centre is provided at New Islington, Manchester’s Millennium Community.

 

Download the Millennium Communities Programme brochure from the Publications page.

 

Partners

English Partnerships is working with the following partners on the Millennium Communities Programme:

 

Registered social landlords	Local authorities
Beth Johnson Housing Group Moat Housing Association Home Housing Hyde Housing Group Manchester Methodist Housing Association(Great Places Housing Group) Freebridge Community Housing	Borough of Telford & Wrekin East Sussex County Council Hastings Borough Council King’s Lynn and West Norfolk Borough Council Leeds City Council London Borough of Greenwich Manchester City Council Milton Keynes Council Norfolk County Council
RDA’s/URC’s	Developers
New East Manchester URC Sea Space/South East England Development Agency East of England Development agency Yorkshire Forward	Countryside Properties Crest Nicholson Miller Homes Morston Assets Taylor Woodrow Urban Splash Fleming Developments Barratts Bellways Network Space Laings

Millennium Communities Partners' Network (MCPN) events

Visit the Millennium Communities Partners' Network event page to keep updated on all the recent Network events. Currently you can download the presentations that were given a the latest MCPN event at CUBE near New Islington Millennium Community, Manchester.

We look forward to seeing you at the next MCPN event on 30 April 2008 in Telford.