Regeneration project brings thousands of jobs back to Stoke

Working on behalf of St Modwen Properties, our planning team have secured outline planning permission for almost 22 hectares of industrial and logistics development on the former Etruria Valley site in Stoke.

This is the next phase of regeneration on the former Shelton Iron and Steelworks site which, when complete, will see the culmination of decades of work transforming 120 hectares of disused land back into use and will have generated thousands of jobs for the local community.

Production at the steelworks halted in 1978 and the site remained dormant for 10 years until regeneration plans were put in place. Since then the land has been reclaimed and planning permission has been secured for a range of employment, leisure, retail and residential uses across the site.

Our team were originally commissioned to submit three separate planning applications on the southern part of Etruria Valley in 2002, and those developments, including a new Vodafone call centre, were completed in the following year.

As part of these developments, junction capacity, infrastructure and drainage improvements were provided to serve the remainder of the site in the years that followed and work was undertaken to create a vision for the site of transformative regeneration, later encapsulated within the 2013 Etruria Valley SPD.

From 2011 onwards, we were commissioned to submit outline applications for B1, B2 and B8 uses across later phases of the site, securing consent for some c.6,000 sqm of office space, c.6,000sq m of B2 industrial space and c.20,000sq m of B8 storage and distribution space, in addition to additional infrastructure improvement works.  In 2019, RPS secured outline consent for a further 22ha of industrial development. 

Over the years, our planner team has submitted applications to diversify the offer on the site, securing consent for a new Ambulance Hub for the West Midlands Ambulance Service and for an out of centre leisure facility on behalf of bet365.