New plans for Newbury Kennet Centre redevelopment

Just weeks after a £158m scheme to redevelop a town centre was rejected by planners, the project’s backers have drawn up new plans to try and win over the doubters.

The new proposals for Newbury’s ageing Kennet shopping centre site would see the tallest buildings on the town centre shopping complex drop from eight storeys to six.

The number of new homes would also be reduced from the previous total of 427 to 317.

Under the new plans the number of car parking spaces on the current Kennet Centre site would rise by more than 100.

As of now, these are proposals, nothing more.

It will be some time before the developers, Lochailort, will be ready to make another attempt at getting them past council planners.

For now it’s looking to win over local’s hearts and minds.

Lochailort met stiff resistance last time round, with many saying its previous plan failed to take into account that Newbury is at its heart a small market town.

A public exhibition has opened in the Kennet Centre so people can see for themselves how the new plan differs from the previous one.

Lochailort’s director, Hugo Haig, says the new project is more in keeping with the town’s history: “This scheme is very much based on the character of Newbury.

“It is in essence a conservation scheme and the heritage of Newbury runs through the whole project.”

One thing that hasn’t changed under this new set of proposals is the total absence of affordable housing.

This was one of the main reasons West Berkshire Council rejected Lochailort’s previous scheme but the developers hope the other changes it is proposing will be enough to bring councillors round to its way of thinking.

West Berkshire Council has been told by the Labour government to build more than 1,000 new homes a year, more than double the current figure.

With the Chancellor Rachel Reeves making it clear that she believes building new homes, science parks and a third runway at Heathrow are vital to the economy, the Kennet Centre scheme’s backers believe that time and history are very much on their side.

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