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Manchester City Football Academy Planning Application
What our client wanted
The Manchester City Football Academy is a £100m plus regeneration and mixed use redevelopment of a high profile 32 hectare site adjacent to the Etihad stadium in East Manchester. The development forms an integral part of the continued integration and expansion of Manchester City Football Club in East Manchester and the Cub’s vision to build a successful, sustainable and world class club for the future.
The development includes a new Grade One Football Academy, first team training facilities, a 7,000 capacity stadium for youth matches and community use as well as office space and up to 5.5 acres of land dedicated to the construction of community facilities. As part of the planning application for the development. Manchester City were keen to demonstrate the economic, regeneration and community impacts of the proposals. Consequently, the Football Club appointed ekosgen to examine these impacts to feed into the submission of the planning application.
What we did
We worked closely as part of a multi-disciplinary team charged with developing the planning application for MCFA. As part of the planning application process, ekosgen produced the following documents:
- The regeneration statement – this document sets out the regeneration context for the development, the vision for MCFA, its potential contribution to the delivery of a range of national, city region and local priorities in relation to the economy, education and regeneration. The report examined the employment impacts from the development, as well as the community and social impacts from the scheme. The document was an easily readable, 24 page report describing the regeneration potential of the scheme.
- Socio-economic impact assessment – this document formed part of the technical environmental Impact statement was an integral part of the planning application. The paper covered in detail the policy context for the development; the socio-economic baseline position of the local area; contribution to the delivery of local regeneration strategies and programmes; employment generated from the construction and operation of the project; levels of local expenditure generated through the project; impacts on the local supply chain; the social impacts including local community, skills and education benefits; and wider impacts including those relating to sport, leisure and image.
We also provided information to be included in a public consultation exercise on the plans.
What difference we made
The two reports represent an important part both of the planning process and in the communication of a high profile regeneration scheme to the media and general public. The regeneration statement focused on the key regeneration benefits and set out a clear and robust justification of the proposals. It discussed the vision and objectives of the scheme in an inspiring and engaging way. As such, it has acted as one of the key documents for public circulation and has been used to generate local and media interest in the project by explaining in broad, but evidence based terms, the commitments of the Football Club to securing local economic and social impacts through these proposals.
The socio-economic assessment represents a more technical document and fulfils a key requirement of the Environmental Impact Assessment required through the planning process. The assessment focused on the facts, figures and overall analysis of the social and economic impacts and the assumptions used to develop these.