In 2018 Mendip District Council acquired the 5 hectare post industrial site in Frome known as Saxonvale. It directly adjoins the medieval town centre and has for 20 years been the subject of several proposals and planning applications for partial or comprehensive reuse, none of which have been able to progress. In the same year Mendip District Council were one of dozens of Local Authorities to declare a climate change emergency. Frome Town Council were one of these too and their sizeable land interest on the eastern fringes of the Saxonvale site was then sold to Mendip to optimise the overall development.
We were commissioned by the Council’s selected development partner, The Acorn Property Group, to propose how the site should be redeveloped to best contribute to mitigating climate change and best serve Frome.
Frome is an unusually independently minded place and through its residents and its politically independent Council has put in hand many initiatives to build consensus and local responsibility for the global impacts of its households’ lifestyles.
Through extensive consultations with residents and key stakeholders we established a set of principles to guide and test the development. Its has been designed to recognise low car commuting living and working lifestyles now so evident in regenerated city centres. The aim is to use these new living/working patterns to draw in residents and workers to the scheme who (whether they now live locally or come from elsewhere) recognise these values, and households who see the virtues of this convenience and the added environmental impact accountability market town urban living brings.
It recognises that for so many family households managing childcare is the biggest lifestyle choice they have to make. By building opportunities to work closer to or from home the practical flexibility and adaptability such families need can be found.
Unusually for a small town the development will be 85% apartments to allow the high densities such convenience demands. This will place new expectations on the quality of public realm, its spaces, its biodiversity, and how they can be used. There will be a new riverside public park and communal garden spaces throughout the scheme.
All involved recognise the built environment society builds determines the lifestyles and consumption patterns its residents can follow. By deciding first what we value most change can be built around those values, rather than those imposed on us by the commercial drivers of our ‘consumer society’. The project’s sustainability ambitions have been modified by the Bio-Regional Consultancy, who will guide and monitor the more sustainable lifestyles the scheme will support through the new neighbourhood building.