Heidi Alexander will use a visit to the city to unveil Government development company Platform 4, which will be tasked with delivering the £1 billion of building of up to 40,000 new homes on surplus railway land over the next decade.
A section of Newcastle’s Forth Yards site, a massive 50 acre regeneration area to the west of the city centre where as many as 2,500 houses could ultimately be built, is earmarked as one of four priority plots for Platform 4.
The Forth Goods Yard section of that wider development site, a Network Rail-owned parcel of derelict land close to Central Station, could be brought back to life with up to 600 homes and a 650-space multi-storey car park.
It is hoped that its transformation could act as a catalyst to the wider Forth Yards project, including the long-awaited Quayside West scheme.
Early plans for the disused Goods Yard feature a “New York-style” elevated pedestrian and cycle route, likened to the US city’s High Line park created on an old railway spur, that would connect to Central Station using the former rail viaduct.
Image: Newcastle Libraries/Newcastle City Council.
The Department for Transport said today that Platform 4 would “breathe life into forgotten corners of Britain’s railway land” and bring forward developments at “greater pace and scale” than in the past, as Labour aims to have 1.5 million new homes built across the country by 2029.
The publicly-owned company, which aims to attract more than £350 million in private sector investment, has been formed from the merger of London and Continental Railways Limited and Network Rail’s Property Development team.
Ms Alexander said: “Our railways are more than just connections between places – they create economic opportunity and drive regeneration. It’s exciting to picture the thousands of families who will live in these future homes, the vibrant neighbourhoods springing up, and the new businesses that will launch thanks to these developments.
“Platform 4 will breathe new life into these spaces, delivering tens of thousands of new homes as part of our Plan for Change promise to build 1.5 million homes, while reviving communities around rail stations, supporting jobs and driving economic growth.”
Quayside West, where the old Elswick leadworks once stood, is the largest land parcel within the Forth Yards area. It was bought by Homes England last year after a previous £250 million development fell through and the Government has since been asked to invest a further £120 million to fund remediation works and develop surrounding infrastructure that would make housebuilding a more viable proposition.
Deputy Prime Minister and Housing Secretary Angela Rayner said: “We are facing a housing crisis which has led to a generation being locked out of homeownership, all while land sits empty and disused across the country.
“We said we’d do everything possible to get Britain building, and that’s why today we’re setting out how we’ll get more homes built across surplus railway network sites in line with our brownfield-first approach and our Plan for Change target of delivering 1.5 million homes.”
