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Birmingham publishes prospectus of major housing development opportunities


Birmingham City Council has published a prospectus of more than 40 major housing development sites intended to help deliver the homes required to accommodate the expanding population of the West Midlands city.

The Council said Birmingham's population was expected to grow by 150,000 by 2031, requiring "at least another 80,000 new homes". The 'Birmingham Housing Prospectus' (72-page / 22 MB PDF), produced this week "to provide developers and investors with a list of the major housing development opportunities in Birmingham" included details of sites considered to have potential to accommodate nearly 20,000 of the required new homes.

The prospectus includes a site at Masshouse, near the proposed Curzon Street HS2 station in Birmingham city centre, with outline planning permission for around 1,000 apartments. It said the Banbury Wharf site on nearby Montague Street had the potential to provide a further 700 homes "including a mix of apartments, terraces and courtyard houses". The document also lists three sites near the city centre's Digbeth coach station with the combined capacity for up to 1,350 new homes.

To the west of the city centre, the prospectus includes the 22.6 hectare Icknield Port Loop site, for which outline planning permission had been granted for up to 1,150 family homes and apartments. The Council said a "substantial part" of the 20 hectare City Hospital site would become available for the development of up to 750 homes following the expected transfer of the hospital's acute service to the new Midland Metropolitan Hospital in 2019.

The largest site listed in the document was the Langley sustainable urban extension proposed to the north east of Birmingham. The prospectus said a consortium of developers was actively promoting the 273 hectare site, at which up to 5,000 homes were expected to be delivered by 2031.

The Council said future opportunities exist for the development of over 2,000 homes in the east of Birmingham, including 430 homes on land surrounding the locally listed Cincinnati building in Castle Vale and 350 homes on land proposed to be removed from the green belt in Shard End. Most of the 1,700 homes proposed for the city's southern districts are proposed to be developed at the 190 hectare site of the former MG Rover car plant at Longbridge, at which 1,450 family homes, apartments and extra care units are expected to be delivered by 2025.

The Council's director of planning and regeneration, Waheed Nazir, said in a statement: "Traditionally, developers and investors have had to do all their own research, or employ land agents to find the best sites. We have made it easy for them by listing them all in this document all of the key sites for new housing. There is something in there for everyone – sites for student housing, sites for apartment development, for private rented developments, or for traditional suburban development of houses for rent and sale."

"We want to use the prospectus to encourage inward investment into Birmingham, so even if a developer or investor is coming from outside the city – whether that be from London, Glasgow or Abu Dhabi – they can find all of the key residential opportunities in one document, together with the essential contacts for each site," Nazir said.

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