Case study: Viking Way, Congleton

Integrating biodiversity and landscape character considerations with client goals and Local Planning Authority objectives can be a complex and delicate process. Luckily, the talented TG team specialises in coming together to accomplish the perfect balancing act (whatever challenges are – quite literally – thrown in our path!).

Discover how we enabled a major land promotion client to get the green light for an ambitious new scheme through expert insight and close collaboration.

Richborough Estates is a strategic land developer working on residential sites nationwide.

Established in 2003 – and with a reputation for identifying and preparing sites for sustainable, people-centric development – the company is a regular client of the wider Tyler Grange team.

Supplying developers with ‘oven-ready’ plots, Richborough Estates prides itself on helping developers speed up the process of creating places for new homes.

The critical challenge for this particular project was clear: how could we respond positively to the visual character of the landscape and achieve a biodiversity net gain in the face of several significant obstacles, whilst still delivering the commercial requirements?

And, further to this, how could we support the client to overcome post-submission challenges posed by consultees and stakeholders?

Fortunately, when it comes to the natural world, even the prickliest puzzle is no match for Team TG.

Achieving a biodiversity net gain (BNG) is fast becoming a compulsory part of the planning progress. To increase ‘value’ of habitats and leave the site in a more biodiverse state than they found it, Richborough Estates needed specialist support and consultancy from our experts.

We wanted to achieve a biodiversity net gain within the boundary of the plot rather than off-site.

Initially, this posed a significant challenge.

After the request for a 50-metre buffer along a significant river corridor next to the site, we seized the opportunity to use this extra land to our advantage.

From an ecological perspective, it was time to roll up our sleeves and get creative to meet the site’s biodiversity needs and hatch plans that aligned with its Green Infrastructure strategy, too.

TG’s ecology team has a deep understanding of how the biodiversity metric works, so we can pick appropriate habitats that will be highly valuable for a site and work in harmony with public open space.

Part of the development site comprised a greenway, which was integral to linkages off-site and the delivery of the allocation, which we needed to keep open and accessible to the public while making sure it posed no conflict to habitats or people.

A mosaic of grass, scrub and ponds would score highly and align perfectly with Green Infrastructure requirements.

Our team worked closely with the Local Planning Authority’s ecologist to iron out the finer details of the biodiversity metric to keep it proportionate and make sure it was correctly applied.

Collaborating closely with the Local Authority, as well as our in-house landscape team, we devised a winning solution that added value to the natural world, the client’s objectives, and end users’ experiences of the site.

Every successful development involves a level of compromise, and this particular project highlights the intrinsic value of the collaborative approach embedded in each and every project we touch.

Ecologists and landscape architects naturally have different priorities, yet when we take a seamless, integrated approach, our primary goal is achieving the client’s objectives in a way that adds bundles of value to people and nature.

We only work on projects that align with our core values, and the Congleton development was no exception. So, our ecologists and landscape planners worked closely and considerately internally and externally with the Local Planning Authority representatives to create a resolution everyone could get behind.

While we’re not in the same office at the moment (sigh), we applied the same level of collaboration virtually to reach a cohesive Green Infrastructure strategy that met all of the client’s needs.

This unified approach enables us to address and resolve challenges quickly and effectively in true TG-style.

Thanks to our unwavering values and determination to work together to help great projects succeed, our clients experience major gains at every stage of the planning process when they work with us. And we often have a lot of fun along the way!