About

Chelmsford Garden Community

Chelmsford Garden Village will deliver around 10,000 new homes, 45,000sqm employment space and a wide range of sustainable facilities and services to create a self-supporting community and reduce the need for outward journeys.

The Garden Community will be a shared place with an ethos of equity. A place to live with nature, integrating a symbiotic natural landscape where people can experience and explore nature and wildlife, within a resilient ecological network. It will support a 21st Century environmentally conscious community aspiring to sustainable lifestyles, self-sufficiency and efficient use of resources. It will be a place with a distinct identity, where people are free to live in a shared and balanced environment, where unexpected joy and wonder can be found in the twists and turns of an organically formed new place.

Shared and Sharing

Shared between the city and the country,
Shared and shaped by those who will live there and those who already do,
Shared spaces and landscape for people and nature,
Shared streets for movement of vehicles, bikes and pedestrians,
Shared workspaces for flexible and multi-purpose working environments,
Sharing culture where items, produce, knowledge, skills and spaces are borrowed and exchanged,
A Shared commitment to long-term management and collective stewardship,
Shared experiences, a fun, memorable and fascinating place to live.

The Story So Far

Chelmsford Garden Community was allocated in Chelmsford Local Plan in 2020 for 3000 dwellings and 45,000sqm employment within the Plan Period to 2036, with a further 2,500 dwellings to be considered as part of the Local Plan Review 2022. Please visit Chelmsford City Council’s website for more details here.

Chelmsford Local Plan Allocation 2020

The Garden Community will be designed in collaboration with new and existing residents, facilitating mechanisms by which the community will engage in long-term stewardship, ultimately contributing to a legacy of which the City can be proud. The Garden Community will build on the successes already achieved at Beaulieu and Channels, and together these will deliver 10,000 new homes and other facilities to Chelmsford. For more information please visit Chelmsford City Council’s website here.

The site has been formally designated by Homes England as Chelmsford Garden Community – which includes land allocated in the Local Plan and committed development at Beaulieu and Channels.

New infrastructure will include a new train station delivered by Network Rail and the Chelmsford North East By-pass.

Beaulieu (under construction) up to 3,600 homes, 2 x primary and 1 x secondary school, local centre, employment area, retail, community centre, formal sports provision and public open space, strategic infrastructure.

Channels (under construction) up to 750 homes, including a range of formal and informal open space areas, junction improvements to Essex Regiment Way and delivery of the northern section of the Radial Distributor Road (RDR)