School Close | ZED PODS

School Close, Bampton

A social housing development of 18 zero operational carbon homes

In collaboration with Mid Devon District Council, we have designed and achieved planning approval for this groundbreaking social-rented, zero-carbon operational development. This initiative helps maximise the Council’s provision for housing and parking by providing 18 high-quality energy-efficient homes. It aligns with Mid Devon District Council's ambitious objective to construct new affordable housing units and introduce innovative housing solutions.

Project Information

Client: Mid Devon District Council (MDDC)

Location: 1-12 School Close, Bampton, EX16 9NN

Building Solution: Permanent

Scope of works: Full Turnkey Service (RIBA Stage 0 – 7)

Status: Planning granted

Project Team

Funding Supports

Existing Site Condition

Transforming our council-owned sites into affordable, low carbon homes that help towards our climate agenda is huge boost for the area.

Councillor Simon Clist

Deputy Leader and Cabinet Member for Housing and Property Services

Mid Devon District Council

Brief

Building affordable & energy-efficient homes

Mid Devon District Council has received grant funding from the “Affordable Homes Program 2021-2026”, a £11.5 billion of capital funding over five years to enable the supply of approximately 162,000 new affordable homes. In addition, the Council has received additional funding under “Brown Field Release Fund” as part of a total award of £660k to build 50 social-rented homes at six regeneration sites across the district.

Full Turnkey
Process

This project was executed through a full turnkey Design & Build process, encompassing all stages of design according to RIBA standards, planning application, offsite manufacturing, module delivery, onsite groundworks and construction and handover.

The proposed development helps maximise the Council’s provision for housing and parking by providing 18 high-quality energy-efficient homes in configuration of 10 x 1B2P, 2 x 2B3P, 4 x 3B6P, and 2 x 4B8P, each home with generous private amenity spaces.

This scheme further develops site surrounding landscape by providing communal gardens and an extended footpath improving access to existing surrounding green. Taking into consideration the impact to local context, the southern terraces are orientating to avoid the telegraph poles, conservation area, and retaining wall located on West St. whilst creating south facing gardens. Local community of Bampton will benefit from the scheme with additional parking spaces, communal green and improved connection to existing landscape.

Key Considerations

Car Parking Requirement: Policy DM5 (page 124) - 1.7 per dwelling, 1 charging point per 10 units

Cycle Parking requirement: 1 or 2 beds – 2 per dwelling 3+ beds – 4 per dwelling

Accessibility requirement: Major Applications (Ten or more dwellings) - A plan to a recognised metric scale identifying 20% of the houses will meet the requirements of Part M4(2) of the Building Regulations 2010 (as amended). As per validation requirements.

Refuse Storage and Access: Refuse storage for new residential properties SPD: terraced houses: two 240 litre wheeled bins and two 55 litre recycling boxes.

Fire tender Access: There should be vehicle access for a pumping appliance to within 45m of all points within the dwelling house (Cornwall Council)

Self-build: Sites of 20 dwellings or more developers will supply at least 5% of serviced dwelling plots for sale to self- builders.

Open Space requirements: Allotments - 6sqm per dwelling - 300 metres or 6-7 minutes’ walk time. Amenity green space 23.5 sqm per dwelling 300 metres or 6-7 minutes’ walk time. Parks, sport and recreation grounds 35 sqm per dwelling include both public and private grounds (excluding education sites) 600 metres or 12-13 minutes’ walk time. Play space (children) 1.5 sqm per dwelling 300 metres or 6-7 minutes’ walk time. Youth space (teenagers) 0.5 sqm per dwelling 600 metres or 12-13 minutes’ walk time.

Public Consultation

The public consultation took place in on 9th December 2022 at the point where the team had certainty that technical issues were resolvable and therefore there was some confidence that what was presented to the community would be a fair representation of the scheme for which planning permission might be sought in the future.

In November 2022 a mailing was sent out which explained the overall aims of the scheme and included the general massing. ZED PODS in collaboration with Mid Devon District Council have reached out to all residents within a 100 meter radius, to request feedback on the outline massing and landscape design of the proposal. We aimed to make the consultation as effective as possible by distributing a newsletter.

Public Consultation Feedback

The online consultation event was attended by Zed Pods and representatives of Mid Devon District Council housing team, the variety of attendees enabled the team to answer both architectural and planning policy questions. The public consultation was attended by three members of the public, their comments are listed and paraphrased below, we have removed names for privacy:

Concerns over Mid-Devon housing replacement and moving policies
Concerns for retaining access to rear gardens
Support for the principle of redeveloping the area
Concerns over overpopulation of the local area and doctors capacity

Concern 1 was addressed by representatives of Mid Devon District Council. The current building is currently being de-occupied, residents have a choice of moving to a new social rent council house in the local area, or waiting to be rehoused in the proposed development. It is important to note that whilst there were questions about the process, there was support for replacing the existing houses which were determined to be in very poor condition, and developing new housing.

Concern 2 was addressed by ZED PODS, who assured the residents that any existing access would be retained.