Approval for 320 homes at former mine

The land behind the Asda supermarket on Scotia Road in Tunstall, Stoke-on-Trent, was formerly a coal-mining site

Plans for 320 homes on a former coal-mining site in Stoke-on-Trent have been given the green light, provided £3.8m of government funding is secured.

The development behind the Asda supermarket on Scotia Road, Tunstall, will include 227 houses and 93 care-at-home apartments.

Members of Stoke-on-Trent City Council’s planning committee were told the scheme would only be viable with financial support from government housing agency Homes England, due to extensive remediation work required.

According to the developer, there are nine mineshafts across the nine-hectare site, and the land is contaminated with chemicals such as arsenic and mercury.

The land, behind the Asda supermarket, was previously used for coal mining, clay extraction and landfill.

Developers said remediation work would include drilling 1,837 holes up to 78 metres (255 ft) deep and filling them with pressurised grout in order to stabilise the land, as well as capping off the mineshafts.

The site was listed in 2018 as one of nine in the area to receive support from the Housing Infrastructure Fund, aimed at building homes on difficult brownfield sites.

The site is located behind the Asda supermarket on Scotia Road in Tunstall, Stoke-on-Trent

Managing director Richard Peel of Mansion House Group, which is behind the scheme, said his company had been in negotiations with Homes England for four years, and that he was confident the money from the agency would be secured.

He said the firm had carried out extensive work on the site, at its own expense, to determine the work that was required.

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

Developers are planning to build a new estate comprising 227 houses and 93 care-at-home apartments

Vehicle access to the estate will 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 and a new pedestrian crossing.

The supermarket raised concerns over traffic from the estate conflicting with its delivery lorries.

Planning officers said they felt conflict could be avoided, and showed the planning committee diagrams which demonstrated how lorries could access the supermarket’s loading bay whilst remaining on its land.

This news was gathered by the Local Democracy Reporting Service which covers councils and other public service organisations.