Wykeland’s £400m development programme is sign of growing optimism

The work, which will be spread across three Yorkshire business parks, is a further sign that economic confidence is picking up.

Dominic Gibbons, the Hull-based Wykeland Group’s managing director, told the Yorkshire Post: “We have a £400m development programme across the Yorkshire and Humber region.”

Work has finally started on the long-awaited £70m commercial element of the Flemingate regeneration scheme in Beverley. To coincide with the main contractor’s arrival on site, the developer, Wykeland Group, has announced that Arcadia has signed up to the scheme.

Arcadia will join H & M, Wilkinson, Premier Inn and the anchor retailer Debenhams on the 10-acre development, which is due to be open before Christmas 2015.

On the adjoining residential site, 130 homes have already been built and work started two weeks ago on the new Beverley campus for the East Riding College. Once completed, the Flemingate scheme will create around 700 jobs. Mr Gibbons said Flemingate was first proposed in 2005, but its progress had been stalled by factors which have included a public inquiry and the recession.

He added: “Anybody who is involved in a regeneration scheme can never be 100 per cent certain it will happen. The recession was something that we couldn’t control. We always had belief in the scheme and belief in Beverley.”

He confirmed that further work was planned at the company’s Melton West, Bridgehead, europarc and G@Glasshoughton developments over the next few months.

Mr Gibbons said the level of enquiries had increased markedly, and he was cautiously optimistic about the UK’s economic prospects.