Swindon Council to remove ‘unnecessary hurdles’ for town centre regen

Real estate investors FI Real Estate Management and William Arthur Property, plus Network Rail and the University of Bath and Business West have got behind fresh plans to redevelop Swindon town centre. The investors are backing the council’s Heart of Swindon plans, which are set to go before cabinet this week. Eight ambitions are set out in the Heart of Swindon proposals which seek to drive investment in the town, deliver as many as 5,000 new homes and create more leisure opportunities. The eight draft ambitions are: creating new, mixed-use neighbourhoods in the heart of the town; growing the town’s creative community and delivering a new entertainment venue; giving Swindon’s higher education institutions a place in the centre and creating a hub for students; bringing leading enterprises into the town and providing spaces to support small businesses; extensive greening of the town centre; providing a broad mix of shops and restaurants; creating stronger connections into the heart of Swindon; and creatively re-using Swindon’s historic buildings and ensuring that development responds to the town’s rich history of innovation. Among the propositions to achieve the eight ambitions are the redevelopment of the FI Real Estate-owned Brunel Centre as a mixed-use scheme comprising shops, community space, workspaces, homes and public space; the development of a new space for Wilkes Academy to bring it into the town centre; a residential-led development at Kimmerfields; and new a regional-scale entertainment venue, enabling the town to cater for a wide range of events, including large West End touring shows and concerts. Commenting on the proposals, the council said: “Central Swindon, and in particular Swindon town centre, is characterised by a poor-quality built environment. A lack of green space further detracts from the user experience. Movement into and around the centre for all transport modes is difficult, in particular for visitors who are not familiar with its layout”. It added: “These structural challenges have been compounded by shifts in the way in which people shop. A greater proportion of shopping spend is being made online or at out-of-town retail parks. The town centre needs to be reinvented. It needs to attract quality, new investment that will makes it a more attractive and vibrant destination, with a diversified range of land uses.” Swindon Borough Council said it would seek to de-risk the planning process to enable its ambitions for the town centre to be brought forward, “removing unnecessary regulatory hurdles to enable the delivery of quality regeneration schemes.” The council will also use its own landholdings in the town centre to support regeneration and will work with land and property owners to deliver meanwhile uses and “quick win” interventions to “build momentum and create market confidence”.