Warring sides make final pitch in battle over £86m Newcastle Heliport building plans
Warring parties in dispute over a critical Newcastle development site made their final cases on Friday, before an inspector decides the fate of a proposed £86.6 million building plan.
Newcastle City Council rejected proposals for up to 356 apartments to be built on the Newcastle City Heliport site, to the west of the Utilita Arena, last year.
But a planning inquiry has been held over the last month as landowner MB European Limited seeks to have that verdict overturned.
The heliport site forms part of the wider Forth Yards regeneration area which the council has hailed as a “game changer” for the city, with hopes of building a total 2,500 new homes and possibly even a new footbridge across the Tyne.
While desperate for progress on the long-awaited redevelopment of what is largely derelict ex-industrial land on the edge of the city centre, the council has vehemently opposed the heliport owner’s own plans.
Presenting her final argument to the inquiry on Friday morning, council barrister Annabel Graham Paul insisted that the heliport was not suitable for housing until a spine road had been built to it as part of the intended development of the neighbouring Quayside West plot owned by Homes England.
The Government pledged £121.8 million this summer to help kickstart building on that former leadworks site after decades of vacancy, but construction is expected to take 15 to 20 years.
Ms Graham Paul described the Railway Street heliport area, which Homes England has unsuccessfully tried to buy, as “dark, dirty, isolated, and inactive”.
She told planning inspector John Dowsett that pedestrian and cycling access to the site was the source of safety concerns, that the area is home to threatened butterfly species, and alleged that a proper contamination assessment had not been carried out of land which previously housed a gasworks.
The council has also warned that the noise from a gas pumping station would create an “extremely poor living environment”, questioning “who is going to want to live here”.
But Stephanie Hall, representing the appellant, said that mitigation measures had already produced a “clear reduction in noise emissions” from the gas governor and that “an acceptable noise environment can be created for future residents” – denying that people would have to keep their windows closed.
Ms Hall argued that there is no requirement for the heliport to be left undeveloped until other Forth Yards regeneration works are completed and that it would bring “significant benefit” to the active and public transport networks on Dunn Street, Tyneside Road, Railway Street, and Skinnerburn Road.
She added that there was “no evidence” that the land could not be remediated to an acceptable standard and that the loss of wildlife habitats was “inevitable” as a result of the construction masterplan for the Forth Yards, which the heliport is part of, with proposals to offset that through improvements to Shibdon Pond in Gateshead.
Ms Hall said that the council would “never be satisfied” as it wants the Quayside West site built first, adding: “However, the benefits of delivering on the Forth Yards vision now should outweigh any preference in this regard.
“The re-development of this greatly under-utilised brownfield site near the centre of Newcastle has been due for years. The project has started to deliver with construction of Pottery Lane, the other sites will follow and there is no good reason for the Heliport site to wait ‘its turn’.”