We are delighted to have recently secured planning permission for 14 zero-carbon new homes in the village of Poulshot, 3 miles from Devizes, Wiltshire. This follows a resolution to grant planning permission at the Wiltshire Council Eastern Area planning committee in August 2024 and the signing of the associated s106 agreement in February 2025. We developed our scheme to transform this redundant farmyard in consultation with the local community, delivering a high-quality design with a range of associated benefits, including 4 affordable homes and localised footpath, bus stop, drainage, flood risk, landscape, and biodiversity improvements. To have reached this stage within a year and with no material changes to our original submission has been a huge team effort. We now look forward to completing the land purchase, with construction expected to begin by Summer 2025.
Our scheme for 5 new homes in Urchfont, another village close to Devizes, has had a less straightforward route through planning. Despite benefiting from a Made Neighbourhood Plan allocation and receiving a positive planning officer recommendation to grant consent, our application was refused at the planning committee in November 2024. Following further review and discussions with our landowner, we have subsequently submitted a planning appeal and await the outcome of that to follow in due course.
To round off, we have another proposal in Worton, again close to our Devizes base and located barely a mile from our Poulshot scheme. Working with the landowner, Worton United Charities, and following consultation with the local community during 2024, we submitted a planning application for 7 new homes. Worton United Charities has been supporting the local community for over 100 years, providing financial grants to those in need within the village. For several years, the charity has also been exploring options for future revenue generation to sustain the charity in the longer term and for opportunities to respond to the absence of affordable rental properties within the village. 2 of the new homes are proposed to be retained by the charity and made available to local people at a discounted rent, with the remaining 5 dwellings to be available for sale on the open market. We now await the outcome of this planning application submission, due to be determined by Wiltshire Council over the coming weeks.
We would like to take this opportunity to thank our landowners and their representatives, our consultant teams for all their hard work and professional advice, and Wiltshire Council officers for their constructive engagement throughout. Meanwhile, we are in the process of working up new schemes and preparing applications for other sites we have secured and we look forward to sharing further details of those at a future date.