Plans revived for 1,400-home Whyndyke Garden Village
Despite little news emerging since it secured outline planning permission in 2018, the proposal to craft an NHS England ‘healthy town’ on the outskirts of Blackpool is still alive with the submission of an S73 application.
Whyndyke Garden Village was a scheme first lodged with Fylde Council and Blackpool Council in 2011, going through a series of revisions before ultimately gaining permission seven years later. It has been developed by the Whyndyke Consortium – a group that includes the Northern Trust and Closelink.
The village would be built on the site of the 220-acre Whyndyke Farm situated off Preston New Road, a plot of land that straddles the borders of the two councils.
Cassidy + Ashton had designed the scheme to be in line with the NHS’s Healthy New Towns programme, which sought to create healthier communities with integrated services.
The approved outline application calls for 1,400 homes, nearly 50 acres of general industrial space, a primary school, two local neighbourhood centres, a pub, a health centre, and a community building. It also features car parking, allotments, sports pitches, and various landscape and infrastructure initiatives.
A hefty 60 planning conditions were attached to the scheme in Fylde and another 58 from Blackpool Council. Many of these centred around phasing and infrastructure.
And it is phasing and infrastructure that have been blamed for the hold-up between permission and delivery – although it is worth noting that the pub has progressed, with reserved matters permission granted by Fylde Council in 2021.
The S73 application notes that the scheme has been on the market since 2018 and had significant interest. However, nothing has progressed due to viability concerns.
“Concerns in respect to the extent of infrastructure required prior to any other development taking place have delayed progress in the site coming forward,” the planning statement from Cassidy + Ashton reads.
The application thus seeks to vary the phasing of the infrastructure delivery to enable the first phases of housing delivery to progress.
To help bolster its argument, Cassidy + Ashton noted that traffic numbers have changed substantially in the area from when the very first assessment was conducted in 2010 and the update was done in 2018.
A new assessment was completed in 2024 and it is this that has informed the revised phasing requests. These prioritise the delivery of site access to Mythop Road, improvement works to Preston New Road at junctions with Graham’s Cottage and Clifton Road, and an upgrade to Junction 4 of the M55.
You can see the full details regarding the changes by searching application reference number 24/0551 on Blackpool Council’s planning portal. To see the original approved outline applications, search 11/0221 and 11/0314 on Fylde Council and Blackpool Council’s planning portals, respectively.
