MMC walks away from £100m Spodden Valley scheme

THE former Turner & Newall factory site at Spodden Valley in Rochdale is back on the market after developer MMC Land & Regeneration decided to end its seven-year involvement with the £100m project.

The company informed Rochdale Council of its decision to withdraw its interest from the 72-acre scheme, which has now been put up for sale by its joint venture partner Hawksford Jersey.

Speaking to TheBusinessDesk.com, managing director Mark Russell said that the company now wished to concentrate its efforts on its other projects after experiencing a series of frustrations at the site, which was once occupied by one of the biggest asbestos factories in the world.

He argued that its joint venture partner had not committed the necessary expenditure to carry out surveys and that a working party which had been set up by Rochdale Council to monitor progress at the former Turner Brothers Asbestos (TBA) site, had made a series of “unnecessary” public statements which had deterred other funders, which would have enabled MMC to buy out Hawksford’s share.

“It happened on several occasions,” said Russell.

Heywood-based MMC Land & Regeneration specialises in large-scale, mixed use development projects, often on complex sites. Its involvement with the Spodden Valley site began in 2004 when it secured an option for a scheme that was being pursued by Countryside Properties.

Russell said that MMC had since worked hard to bring in a residential development partner to allow it carry out site remediation, which would have cost up to £17m, and bring it back into economic use.

However, a combination of factors including the tough funding environment and the adverse publicity around the project has ultimately led it to invoke a clause allowing it to sell its interest back to Hawksford Jersey.

“We’ve had a very good relationship with the council officers and we felt that we could bring a residential development partner on board to clean up the site and generate an exemplary scheme. The funding environment for such an undertaking in the current market is difficult, but another issue is that when we had interest from funders, once they read about what had appeared in the public domain it put them off.”

Moreover, an application in January this year to gain planning consent for the projected was rejected on the grounds that plans did not provide enough details to prove that a “safe and timely development” could be delivered.

Russell maintains that the only way in which the site can be brought back into use without a substantial public subsidy is to allow for a major, residential-led, mixed-use scheme – an idea that is opposed by local campaigners Save Spodden Valley.

However, given his estimate of remediation costs of £17m, and with Rochdale Council already having to find savings of £64m over the next three years, he said the idea that such a contribution could come from the public purse to create a park or other community facility is “pie in the sky”.

Russell said that MMC Land & Regeneration will now concentrate its efforts on mixed use schemes in Gloucester, Surrey, Poole Marina, South Tyneside, Darwen and Salford.

It has secured detailed planning approval for a 308-apartment, £30m scheme off Ordsall Lane in Salford – “We hope to start on site soon,” he said.

In Gloucester, it is working on the first phase of a major scheme in Forest of Dean where it is delivering an initial 200 of a 750-unit housing-led scheme. Some 60% of the first phase properties are being built for social housing landlords. It is also working on the first 10 acres of a 30 acre development in Surrey containing residential properties and an old people’s home.

A spokesman for the Save Spodden Valley campaign said the 72-acre site “must be treated with the utmost care and respect” given its history as the world’s first, and then largest, asbestos factory.

“All the facts about this site must be known so that safe and accountable decisions can be made,” he said.