Business park still an empty field five years on

Despite the new access road, the Nexus 25 business park in Taunton remains a field

A business park remains an empty field, five years after it was given planning permission.

The commercial site dubbed "Nexus 25" off the M5 in Taunton has received no interest from developers, despite the council building a new roundabout and access road to the site.

Somerset Council had given a Local Development Order to the site, meaning as long as a planning application complied with the council's rules, it would be approved.

Chris Winter, a committee member of Taunton's Chamber of Commerce, said it was "disappointing" there had been no interest in the site, but added it was "understandable".

'Re-think'

"I think the problem stems from the pandemic and businesses changing habits," Mr Winter added.

"Office use is not as in demand as it was, with people working from home.

"There needs to be a bit of a re-think. There might need to be resident development to enable commercial development to come forward. It could be one solution to have a mixed use site."

The council's Loval Development Order was now coming up for review, which meant it could decide to include residential developments on the site.

There are markings on the road leading to the roundabout for "Nexus 25"

Ant Breach, associate director at the Centre for Cities, an independent charity that investigates why economic change happens, agreed that the pandemic had changed the demand for office space.

"We have seen a change in the office market because of this shift to working from home, they don't have quite the same demand as before the pandemic," Mr Breach swaid.

"In city centres we still see a high demand in office spaces.

"I think the Local Development Order will give the council a lot of flexibility.

"In a normal planning application you have to be overly precise, whereas with this order, as long as you comply, anything can be built."

'Still an active scheme'

Somerset Council said in a statement: "Securing developers for a site of this scale always takes time and everyone will appreciate the last few years have been very tough on the economy with the pandemic and following financial uncertainty.

"There’s another decade to run on the Nexus Local Development Order and we have every confidence that we will find the right business to bring Nexus to life.”

Justin Sheldon, director at developer HBD, which own the site, said: “It’s important that we are flexible in considering the makeup of what the new development could look like given the changes that have taken place since the Local Development Order was initially granted back in 2018.

"It is very much still an active scheme.”