Norwich council faces losing £12m after housing scheme called in

Norwich city council fears it could lose more than £12m in housing funding following a decision by the communities secretary to call in a major housing development in the city centre.

Historic England objected to the Broadway Malyan-designed scheme, which included 1,200 new homes to be built by Weston Homes, a hotel, cinema, multi-storey car parks, a place of worship and ground-floor retail and commercial space on a site in Anglia Square.

The heritage group urged James Brokenshire to call in the development on the grounds that it would “radically disrupt the character of the cityscape” and intrude on many views, despite the original plans being re-jigged to reduce the height of the scheme’s principal tower from 25 to 20 storeys.

Under section 77 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 secretaries of state can “call in” a planning application and determine it themselves, typically on the advice of a planning inspector appointed to hear an inquiry.

Norwich had successfully bid for £12.2m from Homes England’s Housing Infrastructure Fund to help cover preparations for the development, but now fears this will not materialise.

A spokesman for the council said it was “very disappointed” by Brokenshire’s decision, which he argued would inevitably delay much-needed re-development.

“It will also make it very unlikely that Norwich will be able to benefit from the £12.2m of government funds already allocated to this development. This money would have been used to accelerate the development of the site.

“An independent inspector will now be appointed by the secretary of state to consider the planning application.

“The inspector will then advise the secretary of state who will then make the final decision on the future of the Anglia Square site.”

Weston Homes said it was also disappointed that a “local democratic decision, made after extensive public consultation” was being subjected to further challenge.

“[We] will now undertake a period of reflection and consultation with stakeholders, in order to decide our next course of action,” it said in a statement.

A report to the December meeting of Norwich’s planning applications committee that approved the Anglia Square scheme said the city council had successfully passed stage-one of the approval process to recieve £12.26m from the Homes England fund.

It said that the bid had been supported by evidence that the scheme would incur “substantial costs in relation to site assembly, demolition, site preparation and remediation” that were “in excess of £16m”.

The report added: “If the bid is not successful this could mean that the development would not come forward due to a lack of viability”.