PLANS TO CONVERT FORMER CAMBRIDGESHIRE NURSERY FOR RESIDENTIAL DEVELOPMENT ADVANCED

Planners at Harris Lamb have helped to advance plans to redevelop a former Cambridgeshire nursery into a residential development of 20 new homes.

Housebuilder Granary Developments tasked the business with taking the initial permissions for the site in Fen End, Over and submitting amended proposals to the scheme to the local authority.

Sam Silcocks, of Harris Lamb’s planning consultancy team said: “This particular site, formerly Fen End Nurseries, already had planning permission to remove the existing glass houses covering the 2-acre site and replace them with 20 dwellings before we got involved with the project, but the developer wanted our support in securing amendments to original permission by varying the original conditions.

“We worked with Granary Developments to help unlock the redevelopment of the disused nursery site and have now submitted an application to amend the plans within the original planning permission,” he added.

Harris Lamb, which owns established garden centre specialists Malcolm Scott Consultants, said that an increasing number of nursery owners were recognising the potential for selling disused sites for redevelopment.

“With such a well-documented shortage of housing and development sites within the UK, land-owners are increasingly realising that they may be able to provide a solution.

“With plant nurseries generally occupying large areas of land, savvy owners are seeing the wisdom in selling off under-performing or disused sites to raise capital for other projects while aiding the current need for development space,” he said.

Construction work at the Over site is expected to start in 2020.

Nursery owners looking to discuss the potential for redevelopment of their sites should contact Sam or his MSC colleague Andrew Burton on sam.silcocks@harrislamb or andrewb@malcolmscottcons.co.uk.