THE PHOENIX IRONWORKS

REGENERATING PLACE, CLIMATE, NATURE, COMMUNITY & ECONOMY

1.1 OUR OBJECTIVES

Remove blight and dereliction

Remove the long-standing blight and dereliction at the Phoenix through an economically viable development, crafting a lively new neighbourhood that re-integrates this part of Lewes physically, socially and psychologically; celebrates its river edge; and provides amenity for people across the town and its catchment. It will do this without erasing the memory of its inherited industrial landscape, re-purposing and refurbishing some of the existing structures that remind us of its significant and dignified history as a place of industry, enterprise and work. All while minimising embodied carbon and providing new uses that fulfil the economic, social and cultural purposes of the neighbourhood.

Design a richly expressive place

Create a richly textured, sensuous, mixeduse, legible, adaptable and resilient place of enduring quality that houses people of all kinds well and has the intrinsic qualities of stability, utility and beauty to stand the test of time.

Make a place to start out in life and stay

Build a wide range of housing types, designs, and tenures to create a mixed-income community. The Phoenix provides somewhere for young people to start out in life, stay or move to when their circumstances or preferences change; it also caters for older people looking for smaller, comfortable, more efficient, easier-to-maintain and intrinsically sustainable and modern homes in a welcoming and civil community.

Ensure housing choice and affordability

Offer a broad spectrum of mid-priced housing and an affordable social offer, the size and price points for which enable access to homes for more and more-varied families, making wise use of this brownfield site through a viable scheme, obviating the need for greenfield release elsewhere.

Promote shared living

Create high-quality public spaces, shared resources and experiences, that help grow an inclusive, convivial and compassionate community; this will guard against isolation and loneliness and support the much needed and affordable, sustainable sharing economy.

Capture the essence of Lewes and its landscape

Reflect the dynamic, ever-adapting, at times radical, amalgam of ideas, people, landscapes, culture and economy that is Lewes and has been for centuries. It is these that make Lewes special and the buildings are but one manifestation of it. This deep spirit of Lewes lives in its innovation, bold ambition, social and environmental movements – from Thomas Paine to Greenpeace International, the revelry, irreverence and pageant of bonfire celebrations; Common Cause and the markets; the Transition Towns movement and the Climate Hub; Lewes FC and the Depot; the Railway Land, Harvey’s (and now Beak and Abyss) brewery; Bill’s, the makers, the doers, the performers, the academics and all who make its world go around.

Follow the golden threads

Identify and deploy distinctive and cherished golden threads of design and materials found in the finer parts of the Lewes built environment: twittens, familiar emblematic architectural details, block and plot diversity (hence the decision to bring 13 notable architects to work here) and materials for continuity even as new architectures and construction strategies are needed for sustainability, buildability, costeffectiveness and, more simply, to be of now; embedding adaptability for long-life buildings that will stand the test of time.

Mine the Anthropocene

Salvage and reuse materials on site (‘mining the Anthropocene’ as Duncan Baker Brown has described it), building in engineered timber to eliminate waste, minimise carbon, improve safety in construction, regenerate the woodland economy.

Drive sustainable economic opportunities

Provide training and new economic opportunities – especially for hitherto excluded younger and disadvantaged people in the town and surrounding communities – introducing skills around the new forms of timber and otherwise sustainable construction and in the wider, burgeoning, creative economy.

Design a state-of-the-art new Health Centre

Provide bespoke, modern, new facilities to help improve the delivery and quality of primary health care in the town as part of a wider commitment to health and wellbeing. This includes the former Soap Factory which is to be repurposed with climbing, bouldering, dance studio, fitness, skateboarding, Starfish music, walking, cycling, community gardening and more.

Stimulate the circular economy and community wealth

Curate land-uses, building types and economic, rental and stewardship models that together provide a supportive ecosystem of future work and productivity for a resilient and circular Lewes and District green economy; this to spread prosperity and opportunity across the town in the spirit of community wealth.

Build a new hotel and events spaces

Design a 45-bed hotel with restaurant, café, meeting rooms and a dedicated new events and community space for music, art, theatre and small conferences and festivals.

Deploy elegant and effective technology

Use effective, smart technology in energy generation, distribution and management through an innovative Phoenix grid; co-mobility app for smooth access to ride shares; EV vehicles of different kinds, EV cargo bikes associated with ‘last-mile’ freight and package delivery; and to facilitate waste separation and management systems.

Offer an affordable and better quality of life

Improve the opportunities for a healthier and better quality of life for all with a major investment in local health services, extensive facilities for play and sport, clean air, welldesigned apartments, natural building materials, affordable renewable energy, excellent local food offers, and low-cost co-mobility services.

Make walking and cycling safe and easy

Make walking and cycling accessible to all and pleasurable, establishing a bridgehead from which a new network and new designs for walking and cycling can spread and connect across the town.

Introduce co-mobility services

Minimise environmental impact and create safer, more liveable streets, better air quality and more affordable modes of movement through car share, EV car hire and club services and EV shuttle buses – services that can grow over time to support the ease and affordability of travel across the town and beyond.

Super-green urban spaces

Demonstrate how urban places can be supergreened beautifully for delight, community gardening and food growing, to maximise urban ecology and make aesthetic and physical connections to adjacent green and open spaces – combining to create a new kind of living landscape. Noting that local tree species, rammed chalk and flint are all part of the materials palette here, it points towards, as local architectural writer Oliver Lowenstein, says, “tributaries leading back to a living landscape embedded in ‘deep time’, across ecological, geological, and geomorphological levels of planetary evolutionary shifts”.

Provide long-term flood protection

Protect the Phoenix and Pells area for the longterm from fluvial and pluvial flood risk while reconnecting people to the river and wider hydrology through rain gardens, the Belvedere, river walk, slipway and new Foreshore Park.

Create a regenerative ecosystem development

Design, build and operate a neighbourhood as if there really are emergencies in climate and nature, using Human Nature’s Circle of Impact through and beyond planning into construction, stewardship and through lifestyle choices; together these help drive the creation of a pioneering regenerative urban neighbourhood, community and economy (not just a low impact one) and that connects to and enhances its bioregion and host ecosystem.

Move towards global fair shares carbon footprint & enhanced ecosystem

Work towards inspiring and enabling an average carbon footprint of 2.3 tonnes per person (the global fair shares amount) and a regenerative nature handprint where people choose to live and consume in ways that actively help the recovery of climate and nature; these ‘everyday heroes’, supported by their peers in the community, make good lifestyle choices made far easier by the proposals in this planning application, and set new standards for what is possible even as quality of life measurably improves.

1.2 THE PHOENIX IN BRIEF

The Phoenix is a proposed mixed-use development on a 7.9 hectare brownfield site in Lewes, East Sussex. The site, within the boundaries of the South Downs National Park and bordering the Lewes Conservation Area, incorporates the Phoenix Industrial Estate, once home to John Every’s Ironworks, as well as the nearby Springman House site at 8 North Street. The site is one of the main strategic redevelopment sites in the South Downs Local Plan, and has extant planning permission dating back to 2016 for a mixed-use development of 416 houses and commercial uses.

The previous scheme is widely considered to be financially unviable due to the ratio between low housing numbers and very high infrastructure costs, meaning the site remains derelict and blighted, with its huge potential unfulfilled.

Human Nature is therefore bringing forward a new financially viable scheme, comprising up to 700 homes, focused on social inclusion, circular economy and employment, and regenerative environmental sustainability in a new walkable neighbourhood. Benefits to the local community are manifest, including a wide mix of new homes, mostly one, two and three bedroom apartments, including 210 affordable homes; a new Health Centre; hotel, meeting and conference facility and restaurant; strategic flood defences for the site and the Pells; new access to and along the River Ouse; safe new walking and cycling links through the site and over the river to Malling and the National Park beyond. Co-mobility services will be operated from a Co-Mobility Hub with 313 parking spaces. The new neighbourhood will be fully integrated into the existing town, both socially and physically.

The proposals include a diverse range of nonresidential uses that will serve the new residents and wider community, including creative and community facilities, workshops and studios, including a community canteen; skateboarding, bouldering and music venues for young people; elevated gardens on a Belvedere; taproom, boat house; nursery; streets and public squares. There will be up to 3,279m² of business, employment and flexible workspace.

The plans have also been designed in a way that ensures investment leads to local job creation, while providing training and educational opportunities for young people. The development is expected to generate 381 jobs, of which 173 will be new jobs in the local economy including 139 new jobs on the Phoenix. It is estimated that 525 people will be employed during the construction phase, of which 173 will be new jobs. Apprenticeships will be trained on site in modern methods of construction through a partnership with East Sussex College.

The plan will act as an exemplar for sustainable developments, through its planned reuse and repurposing of existing materials, use of engineered timber structures and panels of Sussex timber. There will also be a renewable energy grid, highly efficient homes, affordable and convenient co-mobility services and myriad green spaces.

The submitted planning application is part outline and part full detailed (known as a ‘hybrid’ application). The outline element includes access, use-mix and parameter plans for up to 700 homes, with certain matters reserved for later approval (through ‘Reserved Matters Applications’). A full planning application is sought for the demolition of some existing buildings, the first stages of a new flood defence along the river, a temporary construction access ramp from the Phoenix Causeway to serve a temporary construction and manufacturing yard on the site, highways improvements including improvements to cycle, pedestrian and wheeler access on the Causeway; three bus lay-bys; and for the development of 44 homes on plots 1A, 1B and 1C in Parcel 1 (as part of the 700 overall homes). The detailed design of Parcel 1 is by designers Ash Sakula, Periscope and Whitby Wood. The remaining buildings on the site will be designed in accordance with a legally-binding Design Code, which will control the overall character and appearance of the development to deliver consistency and coherence across the different parcels of the site, while taking influences from the ‘golden threads’ and emblems, proportions and materials in the Lewes vernacular.

1.3 THE PHOENIX IN NUMBERS

700 HOMES

Including 210 affordable homes

Employment numbers are based on early economic estimates; number of affordable homes is subject to viability; reduction in bills are early estimates based on available data

100% RENEWABLE ENERGY

381 PERMANENT JOBS

Of which 139 will be new jobs on the Phoenix

525 JOBS IN CONSTRUCTION

Of which 173 will be new jobs

£11.8M SPEND IN THE LOCAL ECONOMY

Of which £3.9m per year will be new spending as a direct result of the development

£7M COMMUNITY INFRASTRUCTURE LEVY (CIL)

3,279 SQ M EMPLOYMENT SPACE

600M RIVERFRONT

4 COMMUNITY BUILDINGS

8 PUBLIC SQUARES AND GARDENS

50 ELECTRIC CAR HIRE AND CAR CLUB VEHICLES

In the Co-Mobility Hub

1 HEALTH CENTRE

£15M INVESTED IN FLOOD DEFENCES

80% REDUCTION IN HEATING BILLS

As a result of well insulated homes

10-20% REDUCTION IN UTILITY BILLS

Through provision by specialist utility company

£3,500 SAVING IN ANNUAL COST OF CAR OWNERSHIP

Based on driving fewer than 8,000 miles a year (CoMoUK)