Model Farm live/work, offices

Model Farm is a ten hectare site that has been allocated for employment uses in the county council's adopted local plan. It is the land (including a farmhouse and some old farm buildings) next to the Gloucester road on the way out of the town.

You can see the Model Farm site on the google map to the right, the proposed development is highlighted.

A green field site has been preserved between Hilderseley and the employment land. This will act as a 'buffer', protecting the existing homes from adjacent development.

About the Model Farm site

The site, which once pioneered new types of agriculture as a 'model farm' in the xxxth century, is now intended to become a place that pioneers model ways of working and living in the 21st century.

The Council, which owns the land, has been advised by the local group Ross Area Partnership (funded by a regional 'market town initiative') to make the Model Farm site a special place for local enterprise to flourish in a low-energy environment.

This will mean not only using building techniques that create low or zero carbon premises. It will also mean encouraging a wide range of smaller high growth companies that are well placed to operate in the 21st century's new economy. Rather than rely on a handful of large employers with traditional (but not very well paid) jobs in warehouses and industrial plants, the preference is for businesses that use new technology, environmental and creative sectors and  companies that want to collaborate with others in a supportive working community.

What's planned exactly?

Specifically the aim is to create [each links to own area?]:

• A cluster of around 40 live/work units - homes with integrated professional workspaces for small companies and self employed people
• A number of affordable live/work units for rent or shared ownership, as part of the new live/work community
• A hub facility - an attractive welcoming centre with business facilities and services for a wide range of Ross enterprises, as well as local live/work residents, to use
• An enterprise centre offering easy in/easy out office space
• On the rest of the site, there will be a preference for high quality B1 uses (office/light industrial) with any B2 and B8 kept to their own separate areas further from the hub and live/work parts. All users of the land will be required to use attractive, low energy buildings

These aims are set out in an SPD (supplementary planning document) which was passed by the planning committee in 2007. The document spells out, in more detail than the local plan, what is intended for the ten hectare site.

Taking this process forward further, the council has appointed specialist sustainability experts, the architects Architype, to create a masterplan of the site. This is due to be finished by spring 2009.

The council has also gone to the market to seek specialist live/work developers to build out the first phase of the site - the live/work cluster and hub facility - on around two hectares (a fifth) of the land nearest the town. The process has been advised by specialist live/work consultants Live Work Network.

At present the council is working with a developer with a strong track record of rural live/work development: Spaceworks.

Key documents

• View masterplan
• View supplementary planning document
• View site allocation in local plan
• View live/work proposal