Purpose

Acquisition of freehold employment land at Tiverton EUE for new housing depot.

Reasons for the decision

As per the approved, adopted Housing Revenue Account budget for 2026/27 and Medium-Term Financial Plan, the acquisition of employment land to provide a new, replacement Mid Devon Housing (MDH) depot and offices to replace the current Old Road Depot.

Old Road Depot

Old Road is an end-of-life asset which has operated as the base for the building services element of Mid Devon Housing for many years. It was never purpose designed as a housing depot, having been originally constructed post-war as a bus depot.

The property is old, structurally poor and would require significant (non-viable) levels of investment to operate as a modern, safe housing depot in the future.

Since early 2025, the upper floor of the depot has been closed, principally for safety reasons, resulting in the relocation of office-based staff into Phoenix House alongside tenancy colleagues, leaving the front-line depot, building maintenance, workshop and stores functions dislocated from the wider service. This has restricted the ability of the MDH to provide a single, coherent service to our tenants and created several operational challenges and risks.

Furthermore, the depot has inadequate parking provision for operational vehicles where space constraints also create conflict of movement between goods/operational vehicles and people with resultant safety risk. There is no staff parking and is external areas of the property are difficult to make secure. The building has an insufficient electricity supply to support EV charging and IT connections are limited.

In accordance with this, Council approved the Housing Revenue Account (HRA) 26/27 budget and Medium-Term Financial Plan with the inclusion of £3m project approval for a new depot. This includes £1m in 26/27 for land acquisition and design/planning costs with the remainder of the project budget for build and commissioning, phased over 26/27 and 27/28.

New Depot

Since 2025, the service and an appointed specialist commercial land agent have been working on behalf of MDH to identify and move forward with the acquisition of an appropriate commercial land site upon which a new depot can be built.

A plot has now been identified on the designated commercial land site within the Tiverton Eastern Urban Extension that fully meets the essential criteria for the new depot:

• Located within Tiverton (staff retention and proximity to largest concentration of council housing)
• Fully serviced plot – ready to build site with road access, drainage, power and communication links provided
• Minimum 1 acre plot (1.5 acre plot is available – sufficient to provide a 6500m2 depot building with adequate external area for parking and operational delivery)
• Outline planning permission in place for relevant commercial use

The site can be identified as Plot D on the attached plan. It is located immediately south of the A361 Link Road / north of Blundell’s Rd and is a new business park development (recently named Milestone Business Park) accessed via Barberry Way.

The vendor is the Chettiscombe Trust and the plot will be acquired as a freehold with vacant possession. The property will be granted access rights to any access roads and/or services until which time as the roads and relevant services will be adopted.

The depot building will be subject to a pre-application and planning process where the building will be designed to deliver a fully compliant, modern depot, stores, office, reception and interview/meeting rooms together with sufficient staff/visitor parking, dedicated goods delivery, fuel storage and EV charging. The building size and plot will provide for 15-20% additional space for future expansion of operational capacity if required.

Following identification of the plot, several key elements have been progressed and are in place to enable a decision to be made on the acquisition of the land:

• Price agreed in principle. The acquisition price is currently commercially sensitive but is well within the approved acquisition budget
• Independent market valuation completed that confirms the land value in line with the proposed acquisition price (commercial RICS valuation from a major SW based property specialist)
• Approved draft Heads of Terms – agreed between the Council’s legal services and the vendors
• The vendors have progressed reserved matters planning application 26/00259/MARM to enable, amongst other things, the provision of relevant infrastructure including the access road

Next steps and timeline

This decision will enable the legal teams on both sides to be formally instructed to proceed with the acquisition under the Heads of Terms. The plot will be marked as ‘under offer’ by the vendors marketing agent.

In order to complete the transaction, further to this decision, the Council is required to obtain planning permission for the erection of the depot, the seller must construct the relevant infrastructure in accordance with 26/00259/MARM and the seller must obtain subsequent planning permission for an additional, short access road to serve Plot D (together with adjacent Plots C and E). The seller must also lay services to Plot D in accordance with an approved specification.

Following exchange of contracts:

• The Council have 4-months to submit the relevant planning application for the depot building
• Within in six-months of obtaining planning consent, the Council must commence construction

It is estimated that this will result in commencement of construction in early autumn 2027. This will enable the seller to bring forward the required infrastructure including the access road. In accordance with the Heads of Terms, build must be completed within 12-months following commencement, however as commercial, steel frame building, its is anticipated build completion may be possible earlier.

Once detailed design and build specifications are in place, officers will enter into a tender procurement process to award the build contract, the decision on which will come to the relevant future Cabinet meeting in due course, no later than March 2027.

Old Road site remains with Council ownership with potential to redevelop the vacant site for social housing within MDH stock. This will be subject to a separate decision.