Yorkshire council seeking developers to build 1,000 homes at three city centre sites

The largest, dubbed ‘East Bank urban village’, is on the east bank of the River Hull and runs from the former Clarence Mill, which was demolished in 2015, to beyond the Scale Lane bridge. It could take 850 new homes.

Hull Council says another 200 properties could go up on derelict land and a car park off Colonial Street, close to St Stephen’s shopping centre.

The third site, just off the A63, could be a ‘gateway’ to the city and would be for mixed commercial use.

The East Bank urban village site, a report notes, has a long history of “development stall and market failure” despite the building of the £7m taxpayer funded Scale Lane bridge, which opened in 2013.

This time the Lib Dem administration will be limiting the council’s financial support to £1.6m across the three sites.

The report notes that the project is “unlikely” to go ahead, without taxpayer funds being used and suggests money from the government’s levelling up fund could be used to “derisk” the proposals.

The East Bank urban village started out as The Boom development in the early 2000s. The plans which included nine apartment blocks failed “due to changes in financial markets”. It was then taken on by English Partnerships, now the Homes and Communities Agency.

The site includes a car park and the Grade II Listed building, former Trinity Buoy Shed.

The report says developers came up with a "viable and quality” plan for 72 homes on the Clarence Mills site, however it was unsuitable for the urban village plans. It added: “The brief now is to develop a holistic approach and vision addressing connectivity and the balance of mixed uses.”