Herefordshire Council wants to use Government money to create new bus lanes, new cycle lanes as well as enhancing current ones, plus 20mph speed limits and a new transport hub in Hereford.
The Council has applied for up to £46 million of funding for a number of levelling up projects in Herefordshire. The projects include one in the North Herefordshire constituency and one in the Hereford & Herefordshire South constituency. The application would also include money for a transport package.
For the North Herefordshire constituency a package approach has been recommended which includes the following projects:
a. Leominster Corn Square regeneration and Public Realm projects
b. Leominster Old Priory / Innovation Hub
c. Landscaping at Ledbury Masters House and St Katharine’s car park
Project A comprises a public realm programme in Leominster town centre which will enhance the public realm proposals included in the High Streets Heritage Action Zone programme, focussing on Corn Square, Broad Street, West Street and South Street. The Leominster MTIP identifies significant tourism potential, building on its heritage, culture and independent retail.
The MTIP identifies a need to significantly enhance the towns centre’s public realm and to provide space for events to realise this potential. The proposals will increase vitality and vibrancy within the town centre, by creating a more attractive pedestrian environment to increase dwell time and support the retail and leisure experience. The Corn Square component will enable a greater number and quality of events to be held, by providing utility infrastructure and enhanced public realm, attracting additional visitors into the town centre with associated spend. The project will enhance the environmental quality of the town centre, support footfall, and enable visitors to better appreciate the historic environment.
Project B will invest in optimising the use of the Grade II listed Old Priory, which is due to be transferred from the council to Leominster Town Council via community asset transfer.
Identified as a priority project in the Leominster MTIP, the proposals will refurbish and convert unused parts of the building, which are currently vacant due to their disrepair and unsuitability for use, delivering new flexible office floorspace, to support local start-up and other small
businesses by providing attractive, affordable office accommodation. The project will also deliver self-catered visitor accommodation, contributing to Leominster’s attractiveness as a visitor destination, particularly supporting overnight stays and associated spend. These commercial activities will cross-subsidise the continued accommodation for important social infrastructure, including ECHO, Leominster Food Bank and Leominster Meeting Centre.
Project C also identified as a priority project in the Ledbury MTIP, in supporting the growth of tourism in the town, will deliver new public realm adjacent to the Master’s House in Ledbury town centre. This will redevelop part of St Katherine’s Car Park to create pedestrianised public realm adjacent to the Grade II listed Master’s House and to the rear of the Grade II listed St Katherine’s Chapel, Hall and Stable and Grade II listed Barn south west of St Katherine’s Chapel. The project will enhance the approved proposals, creating a larger area with utility infrastructure to support outdoor events and enhanced landscaping. This will support greater vibrancy and footfall in Ledbury town centre, attracting both local and tourist visitors, complementing previous investment in the Master’s House and enhancing the viability of the town centre offer.
Outputs of North Herefordshire Market Towns Package:
- Creating 450sqm of new business incubator space at Leominster Old Priory by refurbishing a Grade II Listed Building, supporting circa 50 FTE jobs
- Creating new accessible self-catered visitor accommodation in Leominster Old Priory
- Delivering circa. 10,000sqm of new or improved public realm across Ledbury and Leominster town centres
- Creating new pedestrian-priority space at Corn Square in Leominster and creating a new public square adjacent to Master’s House and St Katherine’s in Ledbury, facilitating a larger market and seasonal events
- Improving the setting of numerous Listed Buildings within Ledbury and Leominster town centres and their respective Conservation Areas.
Outcomes of North Herefordshire Market Towns Towns Package:
- Increased footfall and associated visitor spend, supporting the vitality and vibrancy of Ledbury and Leominster town centres
- Sustaining the towns’ unique independent retail and food/beverage offer
- Growing the evening economy in the town centres
- Improving the ability of visitors to appreciate the valuable built heritage of Ledbury and Leominster town centres
- Enabling enhanced events programmes, building pride in place, providing local access to culture and enhancing the visitor economy offer of Ledbury, Leominster and the wider North Herefordshire sub-region
For the Hereford and South Herefordshire constituency the recommendation is to take forward a single project – the development of the Ross Enterprise Park and its transportation linkages to the rest of the town. This will be the first stage of the redevelopment of a strategically
significant employment site for the county as a whole, creating much needed employment land to the south of the county. The Ross on Wye MTIP identified the lack of suitable employment land as a critical issue, with many businesses stating that they will need to leave the area in order to find the space required to expand. The Market Assessment and Market Testing report for the site completed in June 2022 states ‘All existing information detailed above in the market assessment section along with Harris Lamb’s knowledge and experience shows on a national, regional and local level demand is significantly outweighing supply for industrial/warehouse premises’. The report also states ‘There is clear demand for B1, B2 and B8 class development land in the sub-market of Herefordshire and specifically Ross-on-Wye’.
The proposed project will enable the first phase of development of the model farm site. In the medium term the development of the wider site owned by the council provides opportunities to build on the counties significant strengths in cyber security advantageously located between GCHQ in Gloucestershire, and the Midlands Centre for Cyber Security in Hereford. The site is also well placed to enable the county to benefit from increasing strengths in engineering and technology through for example the growth of NMITE.
The project will encompass the design and installation of infrastructure works to open up and create development ready employment land at Ross Enterprise Park and consists of the following components:
- Creating a site access off the A40 together with required section 278 highways works
- General site clearance including demolition of existing farm buildings
- Groundworks to create development platforms, including necessary cut fill and compaction
- Creating internal estate roads, cycleways, walkways to link plots together and to non vehicular routes offsite
- Installing the appropriate level of utilities provision and communication networks
- Installing a Sustainable Urban Drainage system that serves both development plots and highways and that enhances the existing on site natural attenuation
- Soft and hard landscaping and ecology enhancement including the allocated 5hs buffer between existing residential and the new Enterprise Park
- Wider active travel measures linking the Ross Enterprise Park site with existing active travel infrastructure and improved linkages to residential areas within the town
Outputs from the Southern Constituency Package:
- 7 ha of serviced employment land in an area of constrained employment land supply.
- 16,000 sqm of additional employment floorspace
- 3 ha of improved amenity land
- Land Value uplift of circa £2.6m
Outcomes from the Southern Constituency Package:
- 1250 net additional jobs in the local economy
- Increase in gross value added in the local economy including higher value jobs leading to £195M increase in GVA over the next 10 years
- Support for the development of the sub regional construction sector with impact of £10.6m gross value added to the sector.
- Contribution to wider development of cyber and other high tech clusters
- Net Biodiversity gains from ecological enhancements
- Provision for net zero development
The transport proposal comprises three separate but linked projects that provide complementary support to encourage increased active travel use across Hereford.
The Hereford City part of the submission is a package of Transport and Active Travel measures in and around city. Twenty schemes have been considered and scrutinised to check alignment with the bid criteria and deliverability by March 2025.
The schemes identified align with the council’s corporate plan ambitions and support the ambitions of the council in improving pedestrian and cycle movements across the city linking to public transport and rail.
The Transport Bid elements are:
- Integrated modern public transport interchange linking cycling, walking, bus and rail transport. The Hub is designed to encourage modal shift away from being reliant on the car and provide an easy to use reliable link to alternative modes. Visitors to the city will be
welcomed with clearly navigable public transport and active travel alternatives to the car. - The multi transport hub will provide for all active travel including covered cycle facilities and lockers to encourage commuter cycle parking, taxi and car parking areas, bus stands and layovers, short term parking, welfare facilities and enhanced commuter parking.
- Active Travel Measures North of the River Wye
- LTN1/20 cycle scheme from Aylestone Hill along the A465 and Commercial Road, linking the north and east of the county to the Transport Hub, the city centre, and south of the river.
- Bus priority measures along Blueschool Street and Newmarket Street.
- Improvements to the Great Western Way off-road walking/cycling path to enable compliance with LTN 1/20, plus linking to the A49 Designated Funds to improve access, especially across the A49 which is a perceived barrier to walking and cycling.
- Enhancements to St Owen Street one-way cycle scheme providing access to the Town Centre and linking to Rotherwas.
- Safer Routes to School interventions.
- Introduction of a 20mph speed limit in appropriate zones of the city. This measure will assist with the package in making these localities “streets” for people rather than a road for vehicles, reducing speed levels and increasing safety for pedestrians and cyclists.
- Active Travel Measures South of the River Wye
- Hereford Enterprise Zone Quiet Routes – Introduce or improve a series of informal Quiet Routes to the Hereford Enterprise Zone to encourage more of the people who work there and who live in neighbouring housing to walk or cycle to work.
- Holme Lacy Cycleway – Introduce a series of LTN1/20 compliant measures along the Holme Lacy Road between the A49 and the western entrance of the Hereford Enterprise Zone, notably improvements to the cycleway, to encourage more and safer active travel to work and local services. A number of the Quiet Routes mentioned above will feed into this route.
- Safer Routes to School Initiatives
- Introduction of a 20mph speed limit in appropriate zones of the city. This measure will assist with the package in making these localities “streets” for people rather than a road for vehicles, reducing speed levels and increasing safety for pedestrians and cyclists.
Transport Package Impacts:
- Improved connections between residential and employment locations
- Health benefits resulting from increased use of active modes
- Improved air quality, reduced noise and traffic congestion because of fewer vehicular trips
- Reductions in carbon due to transport in Hereford
- Clean and inclusive growth as more residents can sustainably access education, employment and leisure in the city
- Outcomes from the Transport Package:
- Improved interchange between PT modes, and between PT and active modes
- Improved experience for people using the rail station and transport hub
- Increased cycle flow and pedestrian flow, and reduction in vehicle flow (due to mode shift to active modes)
- Improved safety (real and perceived) for pedestrians and cyclists
- Improvement in journey times as congestion is reduced due to mode shift
Further details – (Public Pack)Levelling Up Fund Bid Submission to Government Agenda Supplement for Cabinet, 29/06/2022 17:00 (herefordshire.gov.uk)
