The Future of
Hainbury Farm,
Ilchester
Update - April 2024
I Welcome to our website, where we hope you will be able to find out more about our plans for Hainbury Farm over the next few years.
We are now at a turning point, with the tenant farmer having retired last year, and our plans for the future of the farm taking shape. We hope this future will involve a new nature reserve to promote biodiversity in the area, as well as new housing and employment for local people.
We have been working closely with Building with Nature (BwN) in this process, and I am delighted to announce that we have been successful receiving from them a Full Award for our nature reserve plan and a Design Award for our residential plan. For more on this process, please see the Building with Nature page.
Our aim is to secure a future for the farm that will benefit everyone in Ilchester, by delivering real community benefits alongside housing and employment opportunities.
The way I propose to achieve this is through delivery of the nature reserve which will secure significant ecological enhancements, community benefits and mitigation for road noise from the A303, alongside residential and employment development to meet the local need identified by south Somerset District Council.
Our thinking has developed in the light of comments we have received thus far from the local community and partners. We have developed a second proposal set out in the following pages, which we hope will demonstrate our current thinking, and which provide the opportunity for you to submit any further comments.
Very best wishes,
Patrick Young
Update March 2023
1st Proposal – 2021/22
As you may be aware, in January 2021, we wrote to local residents and stakeholders to inform them about this website, which was created to engage about proposals for the future of Hainbury Farm, located to the north / northeast of Ilchester. Thank you to everyone who has taken part in the consultation process so far.
At that time, we were considering options for the development of a nature reserve, alongside about 275 residential units and employment development across both sides of the Fosse Way. For the sake of clarity, we’ll refer to these proposals as the 1st Proposal.
We are aware that Ilchester Parish Council has recently undertaken a separate consultation of their own, having written to local residents to ask questions relating to this 1st Proposal, which we consulted on in 2021. To avoid any confusion, the Parish Council’s consultation was a separate exercise for their own research.
2nd Proposal – March 2023
Having listened to comments made in the course of the consultation we carried out on the 1st Proposal, we have sought to respond to concerns raised about a range of issues, including traffic flow, parking and construction traffic. We have revised the proposal to reduce the amount of houses proposed to up to 200 units, and focus them on one land parcel to the West of the Fosse Way only extending North from Hainbury Meadows. We will refer to this revised proposal as the 2nd Proposal.
We have updated this website to explain where we are now, with a view to obtaining your feedback on the 2nd Proposal in advance of submitting a planning application for the delivery of a nature reserve and residential/employment development later this year.
Please use the tabs at the top of this website to navigate through the pages and view the updated information on our current 2nd Proposal, and then use the “Your Views” page to provide your feedback.
In addition to this website, we will be presenting similar information at an in-person event at Ilchester Town Hall on Thursday 30 March 2023. Members of the public are invited to come along to the “drop-in” session at any time between 4pm and 7pm. You will be able to submit comments via the website for up to a week after the in-person event.
The Site
