Hounds Hill Shopping Centre Extension

Blackpool

Turley Associates was appointed by the owners of the Hounds Hill Centre - Blackpool's main covered shopping centre - to provide planning and urban design advice for a major expansion and remodel of the existing shopping centre, to incorporate a new Debenhams department store.

Location: Blackpool
Status: Completed
Size: 28,762 sq m (309,591 sq ft) of retail /ancillary uses to provide significant extension to existing shopping centre.
Scale: City/ District centre

We plotted the planning strategy and led on negotiations with Blackpool Council to secure full planning permission for the scheme. The site's location adjacent to the listed Winter Gardens complex required extensive discussions with the council's conservation and design officers and with English Heritage to agree the detailed design of the extension scheme.

Following the completion of a Development Agreement between Fordgate and the Borough Council, the council agreed to use its compulsory purchase powers to help complete the assembly of the land to allow the development to go ahead. This involved the acquisition of a number of freehold and leasehold interests including the leases of a number of tenants of the existing shopping centre to enable the remodelling that would allow the new extension to be fully integrated with the existing malls.

Turley Associates took a lead role in scoping the detailed boundaries of a CPO, under Section 226 of the Town & Country Planning Act 1990, to ensure that this would include all the land and rights that would be required to facilitate the construction of the development and its satisfactory operation on completion. We also produced the draft Statements of Reasons and Statements of Case for review by the council officers and worked with officers on finalising these documents. In parallel with our inputs to the CPO we prepared and submitted an application for the Stopping Up of a number of existing public highways - both carriageways and footways- to complete the land assembly and led the team's work in ensuring that these were consistent with the lands included within the CPO.

Both Orders attracted objections from a small number of landowners and both national and local traders and progressed to a full Public Inquiry. Turley Associates prepared briefing material for Leading Counsel (Stephen Sauvain QC) who was jointly instructed by the council and Fordgate Ltd to represent them in relation to both Orders. Paul Singleton presented expert planning evidence at the joint Public Inquiry, as lead witness in respect of the Stopping Up Order and as one of a number or witnesses in relation to the CPO.

Outcomes

• Both the CPO and Stopping UP Orders were confirmed by the Secretaries of State in full and the completed development opened for trading in 2009;
• Compulsory Purchase Order under S226 of the Planning Act confirmed in full;
• S247 Highway Stopping Up Order under made without any amendment
• Land Assembly completed to allow development to progress.