Case Study: Plan Promotion around Kempston Hardwick

The land around Kempston Hardwick is located in Bedford Borough. Varsity Town Planning act for O&H Land on their Marston Vale Estate in Bedfordshire. This comprises land within Central Bedfordshire Council, now largely allocated for new settlements and village extensions, and also land in Bedford Borough.

At the Call for Sites stage we had promoted various parts of O&H’s land holdings for village extensions, small new settlements and opportunities for brownfield regeneration. We had sought to provide a menu of options as to how these could be brought forward – some for employment, some residential.

Bedford Borough Council were required to do a Local Plan review to a very strict timetable set by the Planning Inspectorate, and they came to us in 2021 with an idea for how they wanted to consider the area to the south west of Bedford. Bedford Borough Council were keen to build on the proposals that East West Rail were advancing in this area. The land that we were promoting sits alongside EWR with access to both existing and planned new stations.

BBC wanted to consider a wholescale redevelopment of this area and O&H’s land formed part of this wider new settlement, looking to come forward for somewhere in the region of 7500 homes. O&H own land adjacent to some of the possible locations for new stations where they would benefit from allocations for high density areas and they also would be bringing forward their sites for green infrastructure, to support third party applications as well as strategic highway infrastructure.

Varsity Town Planning are acting for O&H Land in seeking to secure this allocation, we are expecting to attend the examination in public, likely to be summer 2023 and will be working alongside neighbouring landowners and their teams to advance the allocation.