The 25.32ha site is located to the east of Eccleshall. The site lies immediately south of Stone Road and north of Stafford Road. The site is on the edge of the settlement boundary, lying immediately east of the Sancerre Grange development.
Family-owned housebuilder, Bloor Homes, is preparing an outline planning application for a landscape-led new neighbourhood of up to 500 high-quality family and affordable homes, a new school, a new health centre and extensive green infrastructure on land adjacent to the eastern edge of Eccleshall. Up to 30% of the new homes (up to 150) would be affordable homes, providing opportunities for key workers and people on low incomes to secure a home of their own in Eccleshall.
The site is located outside the greenbelt and occupies a highly sustainable location on the edge of the settlement boundary of Eccleshall. It was submitted via Stafford Borough Council’s latest Call for Sites as ECC06 and promoted through the Council’s review of the Local Plan.
Local planning authorities are required by Government to update their Local Plans every five years. The current Local Plan for the Borough was adopted in 2017 and as such has now fallen significantly out of date. Progress on producing a Local Plan Review for the Borough has been delayed.
Changes to the National Planning Policy Framework announced by the new Government in late 2024 has doubled the number of homes Stafford Borough will need to deliver from 358 to 782 homes per year. This has left Stafford Borough Council will less than a three year housing land supply (Government requires council’s to be able to demonstrate a five year supply of housing land).
With continued uncertainty on the progress of a new Local Plan, and significantly increased pressure to deliver new homes, Bloor Homes is now preparing to bring forward an outline planning application while continuing to promote the site through the ongoing Local Plan Review. This approach will enable the early delivery of much-needed new homes at a sustainable location through the emerging Local Plan, providing crucial community infrastructure in terms of a new school, health centre and highways connections.
The alternative to this holistic approach to planned growth in Eccleshall is that a range of developers would submit planning applications for numerous sites around the town in the absence of an up-to-date Local Plan. Each would be significant in its own right and together would represent a number of homes at similar to or in excess of what we are proposing, but with each individual development at a scale insufficient to include meaningful infrastructure. Our approach delivers most of Eccleshall’s future housing need in one planning application, enabling the development to provide infrastructure planned in from the outset, including a new school, new health centre, and spine road linking Stafford Road with Stone Road.
The site is located within Flood Zone 1 of the Environment Agency’s flood map for planning. This means it is considered to be at the lowest risk of fluvial flooding. However, we do recognise that flood risk is a significant concern for residents in Eccleshall more widely.
In terms of surface water drainage, the Environment Agency’s map suggests localised spots of surface water flooding on the site. The proposals will incorporate a sustainable urban drainage system (SUDS) that will manage surface water drainage from the development, delivering betterment to the current situation, in addition to providing habitat enhancement through the creation of wetland features.
We recognise that there are existing concerns relating to traffic, particularly in the town centre. We will be providing a spine road link between Stafford Road and Stone Road. This will provide an alternative local route between these two key routes, avoiding the town centre.
We will be enhancing walking links between the development and the town centre, to increase footfall to local businesses and provide access to local services for residents without the need to use a car.
By providing a school within the development, this will reduce the need for car use on the school run and relieve pressure on the town centre during peak hours. Similarly, by relocating the Crown Surgery from the High Street to a larger purpose built new health centre within the development, this will relieve parking pressures on the High Street.
The planning application will be accompanied by a robust Transport Assessment which will assess highway safety and capacity of the surrounding highway network to ensure that the development can be safely accommodated.
We do not want our development to have any negative impact on Gentleshaw wildlife centre, which we recognise as a fantastic local resource. We have made contact with the operators of the wildlife centre to ask to meet with them to find out more about the centre, so that we can design our scheme to ensure that any impacts are mitigated.
This important public right of way will be retained and enhanced within a green corridor as part of the open space proposals.
Up to 30% of the new homes will be affordable homes. Bloor Homes is always happy to discuss local occupancy criteria for affordable homes with the local planning authority, if this is something that is identified as a local priority. This would ensure that people on lower incomes with connections to Eccleshall would be prioritised for affordable housing.
We are not currently proposing shops in the development, as we are conscious of the importance of protecting and boosting footfall to businesses on the High Street and the garden centre neighbouring the site.
We are considering the possibility of providing of specialist older people's housing within the development, if local feedback indicates that this is a priority. We have delivered this in other developments, for example a nearby development in Newport includes an extra care facility in which 100% of the accommodation is affordable.
We are intending to provide bungalows and accessible homes as part of the housing mix.
Yes, we have created this website as a dedicated consultation platform and will be updating it with detailed pre-application consultation before we submit an outline planning application. This consultation will be publicised widely, and will be complemented by a drop-in exhibition of the proposals to be held locally. If you would like to receive email notification when the consultation gets under way, please opt-in to receive email updates when you complete our short community aspirations survey or complete the contact form.
We are preparing an outline planning application. This is the first stage in the planning process which sets out broad principles of the development. If the outline planning application is approved by Stafford Borough Council, we will then need to prepare more detailed planning applications for each phase of development. Depending on the time taken in the planning process, we envisage that construction could start on the first phase at some point in 2027, with development being delivered in a number of phases over subsequent years.
This will be determined by the local planning authority in consultation with the local education authority and local NHS Integrated Care Board. They will determine trigger points at which we need to provide this important infrastructure. As a family-owned business, Bloor Homes’ focus is on quality and reputation. We have a proud track record of delivering high quality developments, including the delivery of key infrastructure in a timely manner.