s106 Agreement

This very comprehensive document includes:

• Highway, footway and cycleway improvements.

• A Travel Plan that includes a number of initiatives: improvements to and extension of public bus services; a hopper bus linking Horkesley Park to nearby places of interest, a staff shuttle bus service, a dedicated branded passenger transport service, improvements to cycle provision and improvements to footpaths and footpath information and incentive schemes to encourage staff and visitors to use sustainable transport.

• A Local Employment Plan to ensure priority is given to the recruitment of local employees, training and apprenticeship schemes.  

• A Sustainability Plan with sustainable features including: biomass boiler, photovoltaic and solar panels, geothermal heating, passive ventilation and rainwater harvesting; and initiatives including a recycling scheme and education centre.

• A Local Sourcing Scheme ensuring priority is given to local producers and suppliers. 

• Educational elements including the provision of an Education Officer(s)/School Co-ordinator(s) whose role will include liaising with local authorities, schools, colleges and other training providers; programming lectures, exhibitions, events, talks and workshops; facilitating a “rural classroom”; organising “out of school club” programmes and co-ordinating access to Horkesley Park educational resources including teachers’ notes, work sheets and “boxes for loan”.

• Horkesley Park having original works by John Constable.

• Ticketing and operating times including that Horkesley Park will be a gated facility, to which general public entry will be by admission ticket only.

• Details regarding the delivery of the Country Park (41 hectares / 101 acres of: parkland, pastures, grazing, wildflower meadows, animal husbandry, traditional non-intensive farming, school children’s vegetable growing area, informal leisure). 

• A Conservation and Land Management Strategy which will ensure the delivery of conservation initiatives, habitat creation, a huge amount of trees, shrubs and hedges planting. 

• The Suffolk Punch Breeding Centre, which will aim to significantly increasing the population of Suffolk Punches and ensuring the continuation of the traditional skills and knowledge required to support the indigenous horse.

• The elements and features of Horkesley Park all being interwoven and inter-related and will ensure that Horkesley Park is delivered as a whole.  

• The Horticultural Experience (incorporating the Specialist Garden Centre) and the Food Experience including that visitors will not be able to enter without an admission ticket, the delivery of exhibitions, displays, workshops and demonstrations all essential parts of the visitor experience.

• Commitment to work with CBC and assist in the marketing and promotion of the Borough of Colchester as a major centre for culture and tourism.

And much, much more…

The s106 will provide assurance that Horkesley Park will be as the proposals describe with all the elements and features of Horkesley Park delivered as a whole. 

The Horkesley Park scheme has been subjected to rigorous testing and the findings show a wide range of potential benefits with no significant adverse effects.  Tangible environmental benefits, economic benefits, social benefits and educational benefits have been clearly identified as well as other benefits such as the status of Colchester as a tourism venue and the contribution to helping to save an endangered species.

For further details of the huge number of benefits delivered by Horkesley Park please click here to download.