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Telford Millennium Community
Background
Jointly owned by English Partnerships and the Borough of Telford and Wrekin, Telford Millennium Community, known as ‘The Village’, was the fifth Millennium Community to be identified.
The site, originally a 35 ha brownfield site north-west of Telford town centre, had a history of old mineshafts, colliery spoil, and a disused golf driving range, leaving the area with a legacy of interesting ecological and topographical issues. Most of the site had been left fallow for many years and some areas have become locally important habitats for wildlife.
Telford Millennium Community aimed to create a modern, flourishing new neighbourhood in which people socialise, work and learn – as well as demonstrating the latest thinking in sustainable housing design.
Quality Placemaking
The Village, Telford’s Millennium Community will ultimately include 675 homes together with a number of live/work units, some small offices and retail, leisure facilities, enhanced local park and playing fields plus a community centre for the wider area. The public realm will incorprate a nature conservation area, with a learning and play space for children.
Remediation of the site by English Partnerships was ambitious involving major land forming works re-using colliery spoil. This has created more southerly facing slopes to enable greater natural day lighting into homes and introduced a Sustainable Urban Drainage (SUDs) system. The site now has new entrance gateways with a new focal point square.
Taylor Wimpey is lead developer for the site with Beth Johnson Housing Group as Registered Social Landlord partner. After a series of extensive public consultation events, a detailed masterplan was developed that took account of the varied ecological issues. The masterplan established three character areas to provide varying types of housing across the site to honour the existing site conditions including the protection of habitats for valuable wildlife on the site (such as the protected great-crested newts). Road and traffic routes throughout the site were carefully developed giving a great priority to home zones that consider the needs of pedestrians equally with cars.
EcoHomes
Following a start on site by Bryant Homes in March 2007, the first residents moved into the development in April 2008. Phase one consists of 103 homes constructed through Modern Methods of Construction to the Millennium Community standards which include BREEAM EcoHomes Excellent. This phase will deliver a range of housing types and tenures including the integration of ICT into the home giving access to community information.
Community Activity
The entire development has been carefully designed in association with the Parish Council and relied on the establishment of a Partnership Group who undertook detailed consultation on the design of community facilities in particular.
Phase one of the development includes new offices for one of our partners, Beth Johnson Housing Group, which is involved with the long-term community stewardship of the whole site.
Community facilities for existing and new residents are a key priority. The 1960s Parkside Community Centre has been demolished to make way for alternative facilities better able to meet the needs of the extended community.
Proposals have also been put to residents for the former playing fields which could include new seating areas, planting and a new multi-purpose pitch creating a new ‘park’. In advance of this, a new play area opened in August 2006. Ketley residents and youth groups will be invited to get involved during 2008 with designing a new play area in detail – this could include for instance, a skate park, BMX track and/or multipurpose games areas.
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Download a factsheet on Telford Millennium Community from the Publications page. |
