The Castleward area sits within the area of a draft Area Action Plan, and Derby City Council are the freeholders for a significant proportion of the land within the development area. The area lies between the main shopping areas and the station, and the redevelopment has the potential to revitalize an important area within the city centre. The re-development proposals would consist of approximately 800 homes and 16,000 sqm commercial floorspace, including retail, office and leisure uses.

HTA are providing comprehensive architecture, masterplanning, landscape design and planning services for the whole project. The development was won in competition after an 18 month, multi-stage competitive dialogue process. It then progressed to design development and a hybrid planning application working to an extremely tight timescale. To achieve this, we held a workshop with the council at the outset of the design development process to agree exactly what work outputs they would receive and when, and who would be able to comment on it and what status that would have. This allowed the design to move forward quickly and the application to be submitted on time.

The outstanding feature of the design is a new, high quality, tree lined boulevard that links the station to the city centre. Around this dramatic boulevard a grid of high quality secondary streets is laid out along the lines of the historic and existing streets in the area. This makes it possible to retain existing infrastructure and thus gives the layout a head start in terms of achieving sustainability objectives, as new construction is avoided where the life of the existing can be usefully extended. Value is drawn into the layout by making strong connections to the surrounding high quality areas: the park, the city centre, surrounding neighbourhoods and the train station. Significant changes are proposed to existing roads around the site to make the new connections realistic, as the existing site is somewhat cut off from it’s neighbours.

Reflecting the challenging economic context through the delivery of this scheme, HTA have worked closely with the developer and contractor, and all other stakeholders to ensure best value is achieved within every aspect of the design and construction.

The project was awarded the BREEAM Communities Standard, only the second project in the Uk to achieve this certification.