Architect Feilden Clegg Bradley has designed a scheme that could provide a model for a new generation of sustainable suburban housing estates.

FCB has worked with environmental consultant Bioregional to draw up a masterplan for the Grainger Trust's 2500-home scheme in a development area at Waterlooville in south Hampshire.

Grainger is due to submit an outline application for the scheme, which also incorporates 9290 m² of commercial space, later this month. The scheme will be an extension to Waterlooville.

FCB is to design the first 300-home phase of the scheme. This will then be opened out to other practices, following the example of the Accordia development that FCB masterplanned for Countryside Properties in Cambridge.

Keith Bradley, FCB partner, said the scheme had been designed around the contours of the landscape, retaining many of the hedges and streams. Other eco-features will include a common and wood, combined to form a natural anti-flooding package.

He added that Bioregional had been working on the project to drive up the sustainability of both the individual buildings, which will conform to the EcoHomes excellent standard, and the overall development. He said: "We're trying to take the environmental agenda to the entire site and not just the individual buildings."

We are looking for a long-term sense of ownership

John Bateman, the Grainger Trust

The scheme represents a departure into direct development for the trust, which has previously secured consents for schemes and sold the serviced plots to housebuilders. Grainger will have a continuing stake in the scheme through its ownership of commercial rents and homes, which it will lease through its recently established rented property subsidiary.

Grainger development director John Bateman, who recently joined the company from commercial developer MEPC, said thecompany's change of tack was driven by its disappointment with the quality of some of the schemes that had recently been developed on its sites.

Bateman said: ‘We are looking for a long-term sense of ownership, rather than just getting a consent and then flogging and forgetting it.'

Hampshire council planners have earmarked the Waterlooville development area as one of the key sites for meeting the county's housing needs.

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