Stockport development chief reveals details of 4,000-home regeneration

Mr Richards said the strategic regeneration framework would be brought forward in the next nine to 12 months, in “exactly the same path we followed” with the Town Centre West project launched in 2019.

Projects in Town Centre West include Stockport 8, a 1,200-home scheme being developed by the English Cities Fund that is currently in its second round of consultation. A detailed planning application is expected to be submitted at the end of September.

“We know that registered providers have had money to invest in schemes particularly with the Brownfield Housing Fund,” Mr Richards said. There are currently three land-led housing association schemes in Stockport town centre, two by Great Places and one by The Guinness Partnership, which is delivering some social rent homes.

Recently housing associations have turned away from Section 106 acquisitions to focus more on land-led development. This is because Stockport has “tended not to have huge 106 requirements”, typically focusing on “blocks of affordable and blocks of private” rather than “pepper-potting” of tenures.

Work has also completed on Stockport Interchange, which will provide 196 private build-to-rent homes built around the town’s train and bus station.

Mr Richards explained: “We had 4.5 acres, right in the middle of the town centre. It felt like a wasted opportunity not to make that site work a little bit harder.”

Andy Burnham, mayor of Greater Manchester, has said he wants to roll out the model across the region. At the Housing 2024 conference in June, he called for more train stations to be given to councils so that homes can be built around them.

Overall, Mr Richards said, Stockport MDC has a pipeline of 1,200 homes under construction, most of which are build-to-rent but with around 22% let at affordable rates. Across the wider town centre, the pipeline rises to 2,600 homes.

Sir Michael Lyons, chair of the English Cities Fund, which is developing Stockport 8, is leading the government’s new towns taskforce. Mr Burnham has said that he supports the Labour manifesto promise for new towns, but that they “can’t be the only show in town” and that regenerating existing areas such as Stockport was “definitely the way to go”.

Mr Richards said the wider Stockport region is “certainly going to be in the realm of new towns”, adding that “all ideas [are] welcome”.

However, he pointed out that “we’ve had some success in being able to turn round the market perception of Stockport” with city centre regeneration and urban extensions.