The impact of City of York Council’s Housing Delivery Programme has earned it two awards and approval to build 85 new zero-carbon homes.
The Planning Awards 2022 named the programme Best Housing Scheme (Fewer than 500 homes), and highly commended it for the Design Excellence award.
The Royal Town Planning Institute (RTPI) Yorkshire awarded the programme Excellence in Plan-Making, and will forward the scheme to the national RTPI awards later this year.
Alongside these awards, planning permission has now been granted to build 85 super energy-efficient, zero-carbon homes at the Hospital Fields Road and Ordnance Lane site in Fishergate. At present 40% of the homes are earmarked for a mixture of social rent and shared ownership, with grant funding now being sought to increase this further. This is well in excess of planning policy requirements.
The houses and apartments are designed to generous space standards which will support home working and accessibility. Each will have private outdoor space and there will be two new public green spaces where community growing can sit alongside car-free routes that connect to the wider neighbourhood. The plans also include indoor community spaces and work spaces.
The Victorian ‘Married Quarters’ building will be kept and retrofitted to very high thermal comfort standards, and will be converted into an innovative intergenerational apartment building with community space.
Cllr Denise Craghill, executive member for housing and safer neighbourhoods at City of York Council, said: “We know building well-designed affordable, energy efficient homes is the right thing to do. These awards are a wonderful recognition of our ambitions to improve the quality and quantity of homes for York residents, and reflect the skill, flair and care taken by the design team.
“I’m thrilled with the award for the inspiring team driving the Housing Delivery Programme and for the residents who’ll be able to live and thrive in these new, beautifully designed communities.”
