Approval for Worthing's Union Place plans will allow regeneration of the area
Released: Thursday, 07 March 2024
The redevelopment of Union Place will unlock a site that has been dormant for years.
Worthing's planning committee has approved proposals for 216 flats to be built on the site as part of a sustainable regeneration project that will include residents' gardens, a pocket park and potentially also a community cafe.
20 of the flats will go to Worthing households on the borough's waiting list for genuinely affordable social rent, with a further 23 being available for shared ownership.
We intend to partner with Worthing home builder Roffey Homes, sharing the cost of the project and using our share of the profits to acquire more of the flats, also for further provision of affordable social rent homes.
There are currently around 1,900 households on Worthing's housing waiting list and we are looking for opportunities to build homes that members of the community need.
We share a vision with Roffey for a high-quality, sustainable development, and adopt an architectural approach that reintroduces street frontages to High Street and Union Place whilst respecting St Paul's church and other historic buildings nearby.
We hope Union Place can become a multi-generational development, where young families, first-time buyers and older residents live alongside each other and share the gardens and other facilities.
The homes and gardens will sit on top of a 236-space car park, of which 90 of the spaces would be for the residents and 146 available for visitors to the town centre.
The lime tree on the corner of Union Place and High Street will be retained while new trees will also be planted to line both roads. Across the site, the new green and public areas will cover roughly the size of a full-size football pitch.
Each building in the development will be highly sustainable, being either connected to the Worthing heat network or using exhaust air heat pumps to ensure low carbon emissions. The homes will also be designed to include extra insulation, underfloor heating and to use less water than traditional homes.
The developer amended its plans to take into account the views of residents during consultation events. Work is planned to begin at Union Place this year. The development is expected to take up to three years to complete.
Cllr Caroline Baxter, Worthing's cabinet member for regeneration, said:
“I am extremely supportive of this development. It is sympathetically designed and will bring new life to our civic quarter. It will unlock Union Place and High Street, creating new commercial space and much-needed new and genuinely affordable homes on derelict land.
“Worthing is in the grip of a housing crisis and as a council for the community we are determined to build more of the type of properties that our community so desperately requires.
“This development will mean new sustainable homes for local people, with local partners, using local labour.”
Roffey Homes managing director Ben Cheal said:
“This will be one of the largest and most sustainable residential schemes Worthing has ever seen.
“It will revitalise an area of the town that has the potential to re-establish Union Place as an important part of the high street.”
Images of the Union Place proposals in Worthing:
(PR24-034)
Page last updated: 16 April 2024