Hucknall and Linby: Full steam ahead for Top Wighay development after planning change agreed

The original plans for the Top Wighay development – which will be named Byron Park – submitted by land owners Nottinghamshire Council were for 805 homes, land for employment purposes, a local centre, a new primary school and associated infrastructure, open space and landscaping were agreed and approved by Gedling Council back in 2021.

However, Nottinghamshire Council recently applied to Gedling Council to vary the plans, stating it was now not possible to deliver all the proposed open space requirement as indicated in the initial scheme – which included allotments, a wildlife area and, crucially, playing fields – and still deliver the required number of houses.

Consequently, the county council wanted permission to alter the open spaces element of the S106 agreement in the original masterplan.

The original plans included two full-sized football pitches and the county council proposed to instead use the plans put forward last December by site developers Vistry, in which the pitches were the smaller junior-sized sports areas.

Council papers said: “When the land requirements for all the typologies is added together, the space required to deliver the ‘open spaces’ far exceeds the space available within the open space areas of the approved masterplan.

"There is not the physical space to deliver the number of houses and provide the level of open space required by the wording of the agreement.

"It should be noted that there would be no less open space provided compared to the approved outline application and associated illustrative masterplan.”

Sport England objected to the proposed changes, saying that ‘the occupiers of new development, especially residential, will generate demand for sporting provision’

But at a meeting of Gedling Council’s planning committee on June 5, it was said that the scheme would be unviable if full-sized pitches were kept in the scheme as less houses would be built and that there was more demand for junior pitches than senior pitches.

It was recommended by officers that a Deed of Variation for the plans to be changed so the smaller pitches were built instead of the full-sized ones be approved and this was passed unanimously.