Birmingham City Councillors gave consent to the St Modwen Homes scheme last month (27 July). The project will sit on the site of the former MG Rover car factory at Longbridge, about eight miles south west of Birmingham city centre.
The 3.05ha scheme will deliver a mixture of one and two-bed apartments and two, three and four-bed houses – of which 20 per cent will be affordable and 13 per cent low-cost home ownership.
Pollard Thomas Edwards said its designs for the second phase are ‘contemporary’ with a combination of traditional detached and semi-detached houses plus a four-storey block of apartments with courtyards.
Façades will use a mixture of red, red multi, rustic red-white and buff bricks; black, brown, tan, beige and white cladding and grey roof tiles.
A river running along the site will meanwhile provide a ‘nature corridor’ and 680 aquatic plants will be introduced to the river.
The development is the third sub-stage of Phase 2 at Longbridge, which Pollard Thomas Edwards masterplanned. When complete, the wider 15.3ha scheme will deliver 343 homes.
The MG Rover factory at Longbridge closed in April 2005. Outline planning permission was granted in June 2022 for the 350-home residential-led development, plus landscaping and associated works.
Pollard Thomas Edwards partner Carl Vann said: ‘Working closely with the St Modwen team and Hemingway Design, we’ve developed a suite of new house types that are efficient with land, embed social value and provide flexibility for occupation – window seats at entrances, projecting bays for studying and hidden terraces at each level.
‘It is the denser urban arrangement, integral to the typology design, that achieves a distinctive neighbourhood identity.’
Source:Pollard Thomas Edwards
Pollard Thomas Edwards’ designs for Longbride, Birmingham, phase 2c
Project data
Location South-west Birmingham
Local authority Birmingham City Council
Gross area 3.05ha
Type of project Residential
Client St Modwen Homes
Architects Pollard Thomas Edwards
Design consultant Hemingway Design
Planning consultant Planning Prospects
Landscape architect Liz Lake Associates
Highways consultant Rogers Leask
Structural engineer Rogers Leask
Source:Pollard Thomas Edwards
Pollard Thomas Edwards’ designs for Longbride, Birmingham, phase 2c