Clacton opportunity sites
Deliverability assessment of opportunity sites in Clacton town centre
Clacton-on-Sea is the largest town in Tendring district and contains its largest primary shopping area. Consultation work carried out by the Council highlighted the town centre’s unattractive public realm, poor retail offer and car dominated environment, poor image, lack of investment, disjointed shops and facilities, and deprivation. The Pier ward is one of the 3% most deprived wards in the country.
The Council is progressing an Area Action Plan to carry forward the policies in the Core Strategy of the Local Development Framework and guide development in the town centre to 2026. The Council identified five key sites to bring forward the regeneration of Clacton based on potential retail, residential and civic led development.
Roger Tym & Partners was commissioned to test whether the uses identified for the sites were deliverable. This included an assessment of market conditions and demand, site assembly and viability. The study adopted a scenario-based approach for testing the impact of changes to key variables to understand the impact on viability of areas of uncertainty, such as market conditions, abnormal costs and mix of uses.
A key challenge was how to assess viability for development concepts at an early stage of design in the context of current uncertainties in the property market. We used “scenario” analysis based on key market assumptions, development composition and key development costs. For example, on a potential retail led redevelopment site we assessed the residual land value of differing levels of retail floorspace and retail rent and yield scenarios, with potential site acquisition costs based on existing properties that could form the development site. On another site, which had an existing gas holder, we tested the implications on residual land value of varying levels of site preparation costs (including demolition and remediation) as were not currently known, but were critical to viability.
Our work followed advice from the Planning Inspectorate in its ‘Examining Development Plan Documents: Learning from Experience’ (September 2009), which recognised that some authorities had addressed the issue of uncertainty by making reference to a range of possible outcomes and that spurious precision in viability assessments “is not helpful and is potentially misleading”.
Clacton-on-Sea is the largest town in Tendring district and contains its largest primary shopping area. Consultation work carried out by the Council highlighted the town centre’s unattractive public realm, poor retail offer and car dominated environment, poor image, lack of investment, disjointed shops and facilities, and deprivation. The Pier ward is one of the 3% most deprived wards in the country.
The Council is progressing an Area Action Plan to carry forward the policies in the Core Strategy of the Local Development Framework and guide development in the town centre to 2026. The Council identified five key sites to bring forward the regeneration of Clacton based on potential retail, residential and civic led development.
Roger Tym & Partners was commissioned to test whether the uses identified for the sites were deliverable. This included an assessment of market conditions and demand, site assembly and viability. The study adopted a scenario-based approach for testing the impact of changes to key variables to understand the impact on viability of areas of uncertainty, such as market conditions, abnormal costs and mix of uses.
A key challenge was how to assess viability for development concepts at an early stage of design in the context of current uncertainties in the property market. We used “scenario” analysis based on key market assumptions, development composition and key development costs. For example, on a potential retail led redevelopment site we assessed the residual land value of differing levels of retail floorspace and retail rent and yield scenarios, with potential site acquisition costs based on existing properties that could form the development site. On another site, which had an existing gas holder, we tested the implications on residual land value of varying levels of site preparation costs (including demolition and remediation) as were not currently known, but were critical to viability.
Our work followed advice from the Planning Inspectorate in its ‘Examining Development Plan Documents: Learning from Experience’ (September 2009), which recognised that some authorities had addressed the issue of uncertainty by making reference to a range of possible outcomes and that spurious precision in viability assessments “is not helpful and is potentially misleading”.
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