Work on building the first batch of new homes on the former Filton Airfield is set to begin before the end of the year after South Gloucestershire Council approved the first ‘reserved matters’ planning application to come forward for the massive 143ha (354 acre) site.
Outline permission for development of the site as a whole was granted in 2015, with the permission including 2,675 homes, 24ha (62 acres) of employment land, three new schools, recreational areas and community facilities, a doctors’ surgery, a new railway station and a dedicated MetroBus route.
The dedicated MetroBus lanes within the development will form part of the Cribbs Patchway MetroBus Extension linking The Mall with Bristol Parkway Station via Gipsy Patch Lane.
YTL Developments, which acquired the Filton Airfield site from BAE Systems in 2015, is now marketing the development under the ‘Brabazon’ brand name, after an aircraft designed by the Bristol Aeroplane Company.
The recently approved reserved matters application, for 278 homes, relates to a parcel of land on the northern boundary of the outline site, close to Hayes Way and just west of the new Aerospace Bristol museum. Access will be from Blenheim Roundabout (near the Trust Ford dealership), and later also from Brabazon Roundabout (near the Wessex Garages dealership) with a U-shaped road eventually being formed between the two roundabouts.
The 278 properties which have received approval consist of two six-storey apartment blocks and one 7-storey apartment block, together providing 151 dwellings, along with 127 two- to four-bedroom homes of either two or three storeys.
Forty-four (15 percent) of the homes in this first phase will be provided as affordable housing. Across the site as a whole, the developer is required to provide 17 percent affordable housing.
Sebastian Loyn, director of planning and development at YTL Developments, said:
“Filton Airfield is a historic local landmark. We are working with world-renowned architects to ensure its future lives up to the legacy of its pioneering past. The first phase of new homes is designed to form the heart of a thriving new neighbourhood for north Bristol.”
Andy Theobald, partner at architects Feilden Clegg Bradley Studios, said:
“We are very much looking forward to delivering the approved housing designs at Brabazon, which will become a highly sustainable new residential quarter. The family of house types we have created, set within public and private spaces, will deliver contemporary homes in a vibrant new neighbourhood which will not only set the bar for the future development but also for the wider region.”
More information and related links:
Top: Advertising boards already in place near Blenheim Roundabout on Hayes Way.
Centre: Visualisations of a crescent and a terrace within the proposed development.
Above: Illustrative block plan for the first phase of 278 homes. Blenheim Roundabout, on Hayes Way, can be seen in the top right of the image. The Trust Ford dealership lies west of the roundabout.
This article originally appeared in the April 2019 issue of the Bradley Stoke Journal magazine (on pages 4 & 5). The magazine is delivered FREE, EVERY MONTH (except August), to ALL 8,700 homes in Bradley Stoke. Phone 01454 300 400 to enquire about advertising or leaflet insertion.
