The Garden Village At Handforth

Cheshire East Council

Hive were contacted at the time Cheshire East Council were at the start of putting their HIF bid together. Aware of Hive’s extensive background with the programme, both whilst Stuart and Mark worked at Homes England and their subsequent work under Hive, the commission was to act as lead authors and project managers for the bid process.

Delivery

Hive’s role on this project was pivotal to successfully securing HIF investment, which is critical to unlocking the site. TGV@H’s GDA is on course to contract in the summer of 2020. The project will be amongst the first of the December 2018 wave of HIF projects to be contracted.

Designing a detailed strategy and programme to unlock 48 residential sites with a capacity of 3,500+ new homes.
Production of a PID, implementation plan, site prioritisation matrix, area based promotion and marketing documents, and individual proformas for each site including an analysis of the interventions required
A landowner engagement strategy and extensive engagement with funding bodies (including Homes England) aimed at specifically addressing viability challenges.
Drafting an investment prospectus and launch event to directly market the sites to developers.

Outcome

When the bid was earmarked for £21.7m of funding in April 2019, Hive’s commission was extended to support the Council through the HIF contracting process. Due to Hive’s knowledge of the project itself, the bid process and the commitments made through it, Hive were well placed to provide further support. Hive continued to act as project managers, but were also tasked with leading the condition negotiations and the drafting of the key evidence documents required through the contract, known as the Grant Determination Agreement (GDA).

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Acting for Redrow, Hive were instructed to lead the submission of a reserved matters application for 169 homes. This was the third phase of residential development at Yew Tree Farm and so it was important to ensure that consistency was achieved and we did this by working extremely closely with the design and technical teams at Redrow.

Former Riverside High School, Bury

The former Riverside High School site is located to the west of Radcliffe town centre and has been vacant since 2015. The site, which was cleared in 2021, provided an opportunity to delivery for much needed housing development in Bury.

2020 Winner of the national Planning Awards Editors Choice Award for best overall project and the Increased Housing Delivery category for Preston City Living Strategy

2020 Winner of the Spatial Planning and Plan-Making award in the RTPI North West Regional Awards for Planning Excellence for the Preston City Living Strategy

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