Green light for £175m Sheffield West Bar plans

Developer Urbo Regeneration has won outline planning permission for its £175m West Bar Square proposals for Sheffield’s riverside business district.

The mixed use scheme proposes the delivery of up to 140,000 sq metres of new office, residential, retail and leisure space across nine main building footprints. The developer said the scheme would create up to 5,000 jobs.

Urbo said the consent would allow it to progress negotiations with potential occupiers and investors for the proposed offices, private-rented-sector apartment blocks, four-star hotel, restaurants, and retail units to be constructed on the site.

The scheme – designed by 5Plus Architects – covers a block of land behind Sheffield Law Courts that is bounded by Corporation Street, Bridge Street, and West Bar Bridge Street.

Urbo said it anticipated that more than half the scheme would be office space, with units focused around the new West Bar Square, a major landscaped space “comparable in scale” to Sheffield’s Millennium Square and St Paul’s Place.

Supporting documents with the approved application indicate scheme buildings would range in height from six to 16 storeys, and that the residential element would be around 350 homes.

Urbo managing director Peter Swallow said securing outline consent was a “milestone” for the project.

“Working in partnership with our delivery partner, Peveril Securities, I am confident we will be able to secure occupiers and investors and move forward with detailed planning applications for individual buildings in 2017,” he said.