Case · New Eastern Villages
A site allocated for 1,100 homes, consented for 1,550.
Great Stall East is the first phase of one of the largest urban extensions in the country. The interesting part of it is not the headline number.
New Eastern Villages is the strategic allocation on the eastern edge of Swindon, carried in the adopted Swindon Borough Local Plan. Across the whole allocation it plans for more than 8,000 homes and around 40 hectares of employment land, with the schools, centres and infrastructure a settlement of that size needs.
Great Stall East is its first phase, on land south of the A420 at South Marston. Outline permission, reference S/OUT/17/1990, was granted for up to 1,550 homes with all matters reserved.
The local plan allocated that site for about 1,100. The consent is for 1,550. Closing a gap of that size is not a drafting exercise, it is several years of evidence about what the land, the highway network and the school places will actually carry.
Existing site, and the consented scheme
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What the permission carries
Housing
Up to 1,550 dwellings, of which 233 are mixed-tenure affordable homes.
Education
A primary school and a secondary school, on a campus within the site rather than bolted to its edge.
Park and ride
A site safeguarded for park and ride, serving the wider allocation rather than this phase alone.
Sport and community
A sports hub and pitches, a local centre, allotments and open space.
Movement
Access from the A420 and the walking and cycling connections that tie the village back into Swindon.
Consent type
Outline, all matters reserved. Layout, scale, appearance, access and landscaping are all settled later.
Nearly four years, and none of it was the drawing
The application was submitted in November 2017. The committee resolved to grant on 25 August 2020. The permission was not issued until the section 106 agreement completed, in September 2021.
That is three years and nine months from submission to a permission anyone could build against, on a site the local plan had already allocated for housing. The principle was never the argument. Infrastructure, phasing, viability and the obligations that hang off all three were the argument.
This is the part that matters when somebody asks us to programme a site. A consent date is not a function of how good the scheme is. It is a function of how much of the evidence exists before the application goes in, and how much of it has to be built while the clock is running.
Scheme facts above are taken from the outline permission and from Swindon Borough Council's published New Eastern Villages application record. The applicant was Capital Land, and the outline application was prepared by its wider professional team.