Thousands of jobs promised for former coalmine

UK Coal has teamed up with property group Helical Bar to develop a £140m government office campus on the site of a former coalmine in South Yorkshire.

The joint venture between the two companies will see a 660,000 square foot office park built on the 300 hectare site at Waverley, Rotherham, designed to house government departments being relocated from the South of England and private sector firms that work with them.

The site is already home to the Advanced Manufacturing Park, a joint venture between UK Coal and regional development agency Yorkshire Forward that houses a series of hi-tech manufacturing operations including aerospace giant Boeing.

It is part of UK Coal's wider regeneration plans to create a new mixed-use community on the site with 4,000 homes, a business park, community facilities, a country park and a park and ride scheme.

UK Coal believes that the five-year regeneration project for the vast site will create up to 6,000 new jobs.

Plans to create the government office campus follow the Lyons, Gershon and Varney reports which have all called for changes in the way the public sector operates and suggested that some departments could be relocated away from the South East of England to other parts of the country, transferring thousands of civil service jobs.

UK Coal is involved in the 50-50 joint venture through its property division Harworth Estates, and Helical Bar through its subsidiary Helical Governetz.

They are about to begin planning work for the project as well as marketing it to the public sector.

Construction of the office park is expected to begin in the spring of 2009 with it completed in the autumn of 2010.

Jon Lloyd, chief executive of UK Coal, said: “Waverley is the largest of our development sites and this joint venture with Helical is a key step in completing the commercial element of our scheme. The new community planning for the site is progressing on schedule and the restoration work of the former Waverley surface mine site is being completed to plan.

“We are delighted to be teaming up with Helical and to contribute to changing and improving government office space. The site is an exemplar project

where people can work, live and play in a new creative environment developed on a site with a long industrial past.”

Helical Bar, which is a London-based quoted property development and investment firm, has worked on a similar government campus project in Newport, South Wales in partnership with the Welsh Assembly.

Mike Slade, chief Eexecutive of Helical Bar, commented: 'It is clear from the pre-budget report that savings in the government estate are now paramount. This partnership with UK Coal is, therefore, an important step forward in our drive to provide accommodation to meet the Government's evolving occupational requirements across the UK.

“We are delighted to be working with UK COAL to fulfil the needs of the 21st century public sector estate, while also helping to regenerate the largest single brownfield development site in South Yorkshire. In line with Helical's proven strategy, we will drawdown sections for development as pre-lettings are achieved to public sector organisations and private sector suppliers, with the longer-term target of securing a forward-sale of the campus to investing institutions.”

The Waverley site has received national recognition through the Academy for Sustainable Communities (ASC) and LDA Design, one of the UK's leading

environmental design practices.

Roger Stone, leader of Rotherham Borough Council, said: “This is an exciting new prospect, creating the potential to substantially broaden and expand the opportunities for jobs in the management and clerical sectors of our community. We very much look forward to receiving the planning application so that we can engage in a meaningful consultation process on this proposal.”

Based in Harworth, near Doncaster, UK Coal's property operations are now bigger than its coalmining business. It operates four deep mines in the Midlands and Yorkshire and four surface mines in the North East, North West and the Midlands.

Its property division, managed by Harworth Estates, owns around 47,500 acres of land and other property valued at £398m, but which is predicted to be worth £900m with planning consents by 2012.

Helical Bar is working on the project with Governetz, a civil service consultancy that specialises in relocation of government operations. It was founded by former civil servant David Werran.