City Council to lease land to Samworth Brothers
Leicester City Council is set to lease 1.7 acres of land to a major local employer to help support its expansion.
The City Council will lease the land at Bennion Road, Ashton Green, to Samworth Brothers . The company acquired over 14 acres of employment land at the site in late 2014 for a new bakery development.
The Council says the lease of this additional pocket of land will enable the company to meet its immediate expansion plans. It will also retain an option to purchase the land once the lease has expired.
City Mayor Peter Soulsby said: “This lease of land will allow Samworth Brothers to meet its immediate expansion plans and supports the development and growth of employment land at Ashton Green.”
Samworth Brothers Group executive director Paul Davey said: “Our Ashton Green site, part of our Bradgate Bakery, has gone from strength to strength since it was opened in late November 2014. More than 400 new jobs have been created since then and we expect the bakery to grow further in the future.”
Details of the terms of the lease and provisional sale of the land cannot be released “due to commercial sensitivity”.
Ashton Green is planned as a sustainable new community including 3,000 new homes, and, says the Council, will be the most significant and innovative housing scheme in Leicester in more than 30 years. It will make a “significant” contribution towards delivering the new homes needed in the city over the next 20 years.
In 2014, the Council altered its strategy for the development of Ashton Green to make it easier for different developers to take on a number of smaller parcels of land, rather than one developer taking on the whole scheme.
