Project News

Update February 2017

Representatives of all the organisations involved have been working hard this year to move the project forward speedily. There are, of course, some details that have to remain confidential at this stage, but we all feel that the public should be kept informed about developments, as much as possible. In this update we set out what has been achieved so far and what we see as being the next steps.

We are very pleased to report that Halesworth Campus (HC) has now reached an agreement with Castlemeadow Care (CMC) to sell them part of the Campus site for their health and care development. Getting to this point has involved a lot of preparatory work, including:

• Removal of use restrictions that formerly applied to the site
• Checking whether HC needed consent for the sale from the Secretary of State for Education
• HC getting an independent valuation and report from a qualified surveyor
• CMC revising their plans to ensure they would still have a viable development in the new setting
• HC working with Sentinel Leisure Trust (SLT) to ensure the viability of revised plans for the sports and leisure development
• Informal discussion with District Council planners, to check out our thinking as it has developed
• Meanwhile, Halesworth Health and CMC have been in regular contact with the Clinical Commissioning Group to try and secure their continuing commitment to funding relevant services locally.

There is still a long way to go, but we feel encouraged to have reached this milestone in such a relatively short time since the collapse of the previous project at the end of November 2016. The steps we will now be concentrating on include:

• The agreement between HC and CMC will now be put into a legal document giving CMC an option to purchase the land when planning permission has been granted
• We will be bringing together the plans, survey reports and other supporting material to make the planning application. This will be a ‘hybrid’ application – seeking full planning permission for the CMC development and outline planning permission for the HC proposals
• We will be putting on a pre-planning public exhibition

Many people will be wondering what is happening about the Skills Centre and how that fits with the plans for the rest of the Campus site. We are pleased to report that discussions with new training partners are at an advanced stage, and that we hope to be able to issue a joint statement very soon.