The team at Marrons Planning has been working with Arcadis LLP on behalf of Leicester City Council on this high profile development since December 2019.

The project is the city centre redevelopment of the 1980’s rundown St Margarets Bus Station with associated landscaping and public realm works and is part of the St Margarets Gateway. The development is supported by a £10.5m allocation from the Getting Building Fund, a pot of government funding awarded to the Leicester and Leicestershire Enterprise Partnership Limited (LLEP) for shovel-ready infrastructure projects to create jobs and support economic recovery across the country.

The city needed a transport hub that was fit for the 21st century and beyond. A hub that achieved a net zero carbon development that fulfilled the brief to deliver a confident architectural statement for the city and was sympathetic to the historic location within the city centre.

Our Solution

The experienced team at Marrons Planning worked collaboratively with a multi-disciplinary project team from Arcadis and the city council on all elements of the project:

– Providing planning feasibility advice.

– Providing full planning consultancy services to prepare and manage the full planning application from submission to the granting of planning permission, associated demolition consent and a stopping up order.

Key project milestones included:

The team obtained planning permission with no pre-commencement conditions attached. This has allowed construction works to commence on site and to stay on target for project delivery and opening of the new development in 2022.

By ensuring that much of the preliminary work was done at the start of the process and by working closely with each member of the consultant team, the Marrons Planning team ensured that all technical reports were signed-off by consultees during the application process with minimal delays.

The team achieved a balance between satisfying policy requirements for high quality design, landscaping and SuDS whilst ensuring that the project can be cost-effectively operated once delivered.

The Result

Instructions were issued to Marrons Planning in August 2020 and planning permission was granted in January 2021 to enable immediate commencement of construction works. The team demonstrated the breadth and depth of its capabilities by dedicating a team of experienced planners to the project.

The team worked collaboratively and efficiently with a range of other disciplines. The submission of the planning application and the obtaining of full planning permission was delivered within a very challenging timeframe.

The project team engaged post-submission to avoid pre-commencement conditions and worked with the Council and all technical consultees to expedite all details of flood mitigation, archaeology, ecology, ground investigations, future maintenance and operational constraints.

The target for construction delivery was extremely challenging and any delay would have derailed the project timescale.

The team’s heritage expertise was invaluable, ensuring those challenges were addressed early, preventing unnecessary delays and controlling costs.

The team’s close relationship and collaboration with the highways team at the Council and the promotion of public transport as part of the wider green agenda has delivered a highly sustainable key Transport Hub for the City of Leicester.