What’s brewing now?

AFTER YEARS OF UNCERTAINTY, A 437-HOME DEVELOPMENT IS THE LATEST PLAN FOR THE MASTER BREWER SITE

A SUPERMARKET? A hotel? Dozens of homes? The Master Brewer site has had several question marks over its future after being left vacant since 2012.

Earmarked to become a Tesco superstore back in 2014, residents have had many opinions on what should happen to the land, which has even seen horses abandoned on the site.

Now, the prime six-acre Hillingdon plot of land could become a 437-home development.

For 25 years developers were batting to build a combination of a supermarket, hotel and homes on the site, once even being dubbed the “Tesco village”.

The problematic site has lay vacant since 2012, when the hotel was demolished.

Tesco were forced to give up on it’s plans in 2015 after financial difficulty, at which point all plans for a supermarket were swapped for a huge residential development.

The land is behind Hillingdon Tube station and flanked on three sides by Freezeland Way, Long Lane and the A40 to the northern end.

The fourth side is neighbouring green-belt land near Ickenham.

Meyer Homes, which bought the troublesome site from Tesco, originally proposed a mainly residential Hillingdon Gateway development with 377 homes, but has since revised that total three times, to 363, 359 and 437.

The tweaking of designs has now led to 60 more homes than originally planned in 2017.

Other revisions to the application included lowering the maximum height from nine storeys to eight, then seven and back to nine in the latest revision.

Under these plans, a full capacity development would house 1,347 extra people in the Hillingdon area.

The original application was submitted in September 2017, with the latest revisions made to it in December 2018.

Over that period, 578 documents in total have been added, detailing everything from the species of trees in the development to the route rubbish vans will take wen emptying the bins.

Buildings out at the edges of the development have a maximum height limit of nine storeys, while those inside the development cannot be higher than five storeys.

Under the present plans the total floor area of the development also increased by nearly 20% to more than 44,141.

Most of the buildings are onebeds, with 190 in total, while there are 177 two-bed flats, half of which fit three people and half fitting four. Finally there are 70 three-bed flats in this latest amendment, which can fit up to five people.

The Long Lane edge of the property has space for two retail units, a concierge office and the “affordable workshops”.

A “landscaped podium” aims to keep a major pedestrian connection between all the buildings, including three playgrounds for different age groups.

A spokeswoman for Meyer Homes say they have “worked with the Council to formulate a residential lead masterplan for this key development site in Hillingdon.”

She added: “The scheme has support from both the GLA and TfL and we expect to move towards a Planning Committee in the Spring.

The scheme now offers 40% Affordable Housing along with a series of initiatives to reduce parking levels and traffic generation.”

The development appears to be targeting first-time buyers and young families, with the Greater London Authority predicting nearly 100 residents would be children under the age of five.

But perhaps the real question is, will anything ever be built here?

Rumour has it Hillingdon Council will reach a decision on the site later this year.