Urban&Civic is the master developer for Wintringham in St.Neots as part of the Wintringham Partners JV. Cala Homes, Durkan and Morris are the first three housebuilders on site. A phased development with other housebuilders likely to join the party, Wintringham is a complex scheme from an organisational point of view. Urban&Civic has contracted with GTC to efficiently deliver the required utilities connections, including fibre to each premises.
Development: Wintringham, St Neots, Cambridgeshire
Customer: Urban&Civic
Housebuilders: Cala Homes, Morris Homes, Durkan
Sector: Residential
Utilities: Electricity, fibre, and gas
Wintringham is a discrete new community of 2,800 new homes, set in 400 acres of land, with two new primary schools, and a District Centre with shops and amenities. Urban&Civic acquired a one-third partnership stake with Nuffield Dominions Trust and the Nuffield Oxford Hospitals Fund.
Urban&Civic is the master developer whose role is to bring parcels of land forward that are ready-serviced for housebuilders to start delivering new homes. GTC delivers all the main infrastructure throughout the development with Urban&Civic, as well as delivering the on-parcel utilities and individual plot connections for the housebuilders.
There are currently three other major projects on which Urban&Civic is working with GTC in this way. Having a committed and reliable partner to supply the utility infrastructure in a seamless and timely manner is essential to the realisation of this type of large-scale and multi-faceted project. It is essential that there is close coordination between the wider installation of utilities through the main arterial routes of the development as well as ensuring the vital supplies are available to the individual parcel developers where and when required. While all projects are unique, GTC and Urban&Civic have developed a successful and trusted partnership that ensures new homes are delivered successfully on these major new communities.
As a multi-utility provider, GTC is delivering the gas (where necessary), electricity and fibre for the whole of the Wintringham development. The fibre provision is ultra-fast fibre-to-the-home, delivering speeds of up to 360Mbps and is future-ready to support up to 1Gbps. As with all of GTC’s fibre networks, it is open access, with a wide choice of ISPs.
For the electricity, GTC has worked closely with Urban&Civic as significant electricity capacity constraints in the area mean a careful balance needs to be struck between securing load required for the new homes on the development and managing the costs associated with delivering the required connections. The management and timing of network reinforcement is being delivered most effectively for both the developer and the future growth on the site.
As part of the scheme GTC also undertook an Intermediate Pressure gas network connection and installed an intermediate gas governor on site. This connection has sufficient capacity to supply the whole of the Wintringham development and offers a significant improvement over alternative, more straightforward connections, which would have required significant reinforcement.
“We are working with GTC on various large-scale projects such as Wintringham. We are confident that their service delivery will match the complex requirements of the site. Having one contact for all of the utilities and a dedicated manager for the project makes the communications and organisation so much easier. We are also pleased to be able to offer the new homeowners a composite utility offer which includes fibre provision, ready from the day they move in. This is a real bonus to the housebuilders when marketing the properties.”
Richard Hepworth, Group Director of Project Management, Urban&Civic