Welwyn Concrete City – that’s how one Society member described plans for development of the Shredded Wheat site along Broadwater Road. Blocks up to 11 storeys high are proposed, with less greenery than initially promised.

New proposals have been published recently for the Shredded Wheat and Bio Park sites that will increase the number of new homes in this area, west of Broadwater Road, to 2454.

Shredded Wheat site

In 2019, The Wheat Quarter Ltd received planning approval from Welwyn Hatfield Borough Council to build 1,454 homes on the Shredded Wheat site on Broadwater Road, with:

–   811 units including care-homes on the Northern Side, north of Hyde Way, and

–    643 units including social & affordable housing on the Southern Side, south of Hyde Way.

In 2020, Metropolitan Thames Valley Housing, the appointed developer of the Southern Side commenced building 208 homes at the southern end of their site, near Otto Road. In October 2020, MTVH consulted to increase the number of homes on the remaining area of their site from 435 units to 747 units. This increase of 312 units makes total number of homes on the southern site 955. See https://wgc-southside-mtvh.co.uk/ for more information.

In January 2021, The Wheat Quarter Ltd began consulting on proposals to increase the number of homes on the Northern Side from 811 to 1,210 homes, an increase of 399 units. See their Design & Access Statement and Planning Statement for details. We encourage all members to view these proposals and the Society is preparing its response to this consultation.

BioPark

Further south on Broadwater Road, in 2019, the BioPark site was sold by University of Hertfordshire to HG Construction. In October 2020 the developer published its proposal to build 289 homes on that site. For further details please see BioPark Consultation (http://broadwatergardens.co.uk).