HARWORTH GROUP
Harworth Group is the Master Developer of Waverley, covering all aspects of development from masterplanning through to the delivery of new commercial units. Waverley is the company's flagship development site.
OUR ROLE
As master developer, our role is to take responsibility for the delivery of the whole project. We are the custodian of the masterplan and the project vision. We obtained planning permission for the entire 740-acre development in 2011 and have since built the main infrastructure including roads and drainage and provided services, including key utilities, to allow land sales to be made to our housebuilder partners including Taylor Wimpey, Barratt, Avant, Harron and Skyhouse.
We also build buildings and mixed developments. We have delivered a range of buildings on the Advanced Manufacturing Park, most recently for McLaren Automotive and the UK Atomic Energy Authority, using our in-house building delivery capability. We are also the developer for the proposed Olive Lane development, the new heart of Waverley.
CONCEPTION
The first masterplans for Waverley emerged in the mid nineties following the closure of the former Orgreave Colliery & Coking Works in 1990, with the loss of around 350 jobs. At this time, the land which previously housed the Orgreave Coking plant, was being dug up and mined for coal as part of the Orgreave opencast scheme. The mining scheme cleaned up this contaminated site and extracted the coal, facilitating its remediation and forming the basis of a large development platform - the genesis of the Waverley site you see today.
Reusing brownfield land became Harworth's hallmark from this point onwards, with the company bringing new life to former industrial sites such as collieries, power stations and tractor factories across the North of England and the Midlands.
PLANNING
A planning application for the new community was submitted in 2007 and consent granted in 2011 for 3,890 new homes, alongside over 2m sq. ft of advanced manufacturing space at the AMP and for new community facilities. Following the adoption of the overall masterplan, Harworth has since continued to develop design codes for each area of Waverley. This helps to create distinctive character and also provides guidance and rules for our housebuilding partners to ensure good quality design and bespoke site specific placemaking.
Our approach to a hands on and collaborative planning process helps to speed up delivery and is now considered best practice across the UK.
INFRASTRUCTURE
Harworth Group has also taken responsibility for the delivery of the engineering solutions required to facilitate new development across Waverley. This has included the creation of new estate roads across the entire site, the installation of SUDS ponds to provide effective drainage and providing power and services to the boundary of each development plot to facilitate the build out of new homes and commercial spaces.
DELIVERY
The speed and quality of delivery at Waverley is a testament to the hard work of Harworth and its partners and the pride local people take in the development. As at the beginning of 2021, over 1,100 homes have been built by five different housebuilders in the past eight years, whilst over 2,000 people work from around 1.5m sq. ft of built space at the AMP in high-value manufacturing occupations covering aerospace, defence, automotive and energy. 300 acres of useable open space has also been developed, providing myriad opportunity for cycling, running, bird-watching and a host of other activities!
LEGACY
Waverley's legacy is undoubtedly showing what can be done with difficult land when a strong public-private partnership is developed. Thousands of people have been involved in the site's clean-up, remediation, build-out and use, including from Homes England, Rotherham Council and the Sheffield City Region. We are also extremely proud that more than five times the number of people are now employed at the AMP than when coking ended at Orgreave, reversing decades of deindustrialisation and providing an example for others to learn from.
OUR PARTNERS
We work with other companies and organisations to ensure the smooth running of the Waverley development.
We employ The Land Trust to manage our on site management company. They deal with all queries in relation to payment and financial management of the service charge and also ensure that all the areas within the management companies' control is properly looked after.
We also continue to sell land to housebuilders to build out the residential development, working closely with them when they come to build out their homes to minimise disruption and maximise build quality. On the commercial side, we continue to work with our friends and partners at the University of Sheffield AMRC to provide a home to their partners that want to co-locate with them at the AMP to improve the quality and efficiency of their products; most recently this has included the UK Atomic Energy Authority, who took the keys to their new nuclear fusion research facility at the end of September 2020.
