Although the site has been allocated for employment development for over 20 years, efforts by the District and County Councils, the site owners and English Partnerships have failed to provide a development based purely on employment use.
In the late 1980s and early 1990s, planning permission was granted for the erection of industrial and commercial units on the site. However, marketing failed to attract sufficient interest for such development to be viable. Indeed, we understand that in the early 1990s, only one prospective business could be attracted to the site, and this was insufficient to act as a catalyst to pay for the cost of providing the necessary roads and infrastructure.
Various proposals in the mid to late 1990s, by businesses including Nuclear Electric, came to nothing. In 2005, planning permission was refused for a wholly residential development on the site comprising 170 dwellings.
