Shotley Gate: Move to redevelop HMS Ganges site

A major multi-million pound redevelopment of a crumbling former naval base will be submitted to planners next month, The Evening Star can reveal.

SHOTLEY GATE: A major multi-million pound redevelopment of a crumbling former naval base will be submitted to planners next month, The Evening Star can reveal.

Developers want to put 285 homes, a 60-bed nursing home, offices, shops, a hotel and restaurant on the HMS Ganges site, which has laid empty for nearly four decades.

They have vowed to spend at least �2million on restoring the site’s historic buildings, including the Signal School, Nelson Hall and Vincent House.

An appeal against the refusal of a controversial scheme to put 404 homes and a nursing home on the site was rejected last year. It is understood Haylink and developer Galliard Homes have no plans to challenge the decision.

Scott Bailey, a Haylink spokesman, said the development of a brownfield site would ease pressure on greenfield plots. It would also open the site to the public, provide 57 affordable homes and contribute money towards an off-road cycling path on the peninsula.

“It’s been going on for longer than I can remember, ever since the mid-1970s,” said Richard Wrinch, Shotley Parish Council chairman. “There have been various plans a lot of which have petrified the parish.

“I think it is essential it’s developed. It brings enormous improvements to the feeling at that end of the parish where housing is abutting a dilapidated site.”

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