New estate planned for outskirts of Preston

A new housing development on the outskirts of Preston is set to include a school and care home – if it gets the go-ahead.

Developer Wain Homes has submitted plans to build up to 167 properties   – ranging between one and five bedrooms – on land off the Broughton bypass.

Within the blueprint for the estate – to the west of James Towers Way and south of Whittingham Lane – land has been set aside for the care facility and a primary school.

However, mystery surrounds the proposed education establishment, which has not previously been identified as part of Lancashire County Council’s efforts to deliver new pupil places to the north of the city.

The authority is planning to build a new infant and junior school on the former Whittingham Hospital site – and last month acknowledged that it would need to create more classroom space still in that vicinity after it abandoned a proposed expansion of Goosnargh Oliverson’s Primary School, because of concerns over increased traffic.

But County Hall is yet to set out when – and whether – it will build the two new primary schools long proposed as part of the development of the nearby North West Preston area, where 5,500 new homes are being built over a 20-year period through to the mid-2030s.

A 2017 masterplan for that patch, which does not include Broughton, offered indicative locations for those facilities, but firm plans to deliver them are yet to be drawn up – in spite of space for each having been reserved in an estate north of Tabley Lane, which was approved in November 2020, and a proposed development off William Young Way, currently under consideration.

In its application for planning permission for the Broughton development – a decision that lies with Preston City Council – Wain Homes says the scheme will offer “a range of significant benefits, including helping to address [Preston’s] substantial shortfall in deliverable housing land and unmet local housing needs – particularly in Broughton.”

The firm also is also promising a building for community use.

A previous application for 81 homes on part of the broader stretch of land now being eyed for development was rejected in October 2021 – partly because of concerns over the proposed creation of a new fifth arm off the roundabout at the junction of James Towers Way and Whittingham Lane.

The new proposal would see a dedicated access point to the estate off Whittingham Lane itself, close where Wain Homes is already constructing another development, Pinfold Manor.