Plans for 320 homes on a former coalmining site in Stoke-on-Trent will go ahead – once £3.8 million of government funding is secured.

Councillors have granted planning permission to the proposed housing development on land off Scotia Road in Tunstall, which will provide 227 houses and 93 care-at-home apartments.

But members of the planning committee at Stoke-on-Trent City Council were told that the scheme would only be viable with financial support from Homes England, due to the extensive remediation work required. The land, behind the Asda supermarket, was previously used for coalmining, clay extraction and landfill. There are nine mineshafts across the nine hectare site, and the land is contaminated with substances such as arsenic and mercury.

Remediation work will include drilling 1,837 holes up to 78 metres deep and filling them with pressurised grout to stabilise the land, as well as capping off the mineshafts. In 2018 the site was one of nine in the area earmarked for support from the Housing Infrastructure Fund – aimed at delivering homes on difficult, brownfield sites.

Richard Peel, managing director of applicants Mansion House Group, told the committee that the firm had been in talks with Homes England over the funding for four years, and said the agency recognised the 'significant contamination and stability issues' with the site. Committee members quizzed Mr Peel on the viability of the scheme, given the extensive remediation work required and the inclusion of 25 per cent affordable homes, but he said he was confident that the Homes England funding would now be secured.

Stoke-on-Trent City Council has granted planning permission for the development (Nub News).

Mr Peel said: "The delivery of the site is dependent on a £3.8 million grant from Homes England. We have done hundreds of thousands of pounds worth of work in terms of costing up those elements, including the significant work on site to find out what exactly needs doing.

"Subject to obtaining that grant, the site is deliverable, and is economically viable. We're delivering sites that have 100 per cent affordable housing, so we don't see 25 per cent as something that prevents the delivery of this."

The proposed houses will be mostly two and three-bedroom properties, with a few four-bedroom units, while the care-at-home apartments will be contained within three blocks at the southern end of the site.

Vehicular access to the estate would be via an existing junction off Scotia Road, which currently provides access to Asda's car park and loading bay. The junction is set to be upgraded with a right turn island a new pedestrian crossing.

Asda, while supporting the development, raised concerns over potential conflict between estate traffic and its delivery vehicles, which currently reverse into the supermarket's loading bay from the access road. This issue was not addressed in the officers' report to the committee, and Asda subsequently submitted a late objection to the plans.

Asda supported the plans but raised concerns over traffic (Google).

The objection claimed that the applicant should provide 'suitable mitigation' when a new development impacts on existing businesses. But planning officers showed the committee diagrams which they said proved that lorries would be able access the loading bay while remaining on Asda's land, meaning conflict with other traffic could be avoided.

Councillor Laura Carter raised concerns over the impact of the new development on the junction with Federation Road, which she said was already 'absolutely horrendous' even without the addition of hundreds more residents in the area. Highways officers said that while this was not considered relevant to the current application, they would look into the issues with the junction.

Committee members voted to grant planning permission to the scheme, in line with their officers' recommendation, welcoming the proposals to remediate and redevelop a derelict brownfield site.

Councillor Ross Irving said: "Without the financial input from Homes England, this scheme isn't going to go ahead. So we have to give whole-hearted support to the scheme from the planning point of view, and give grease to their elbow in negotiations with Homes England. Because this is going to be a fantastic land reclamation scheme, which without that financial support, there would be no chance at all of it taking place."

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