What is the status of the Phoenix?
The Phoenix was given planning approval, subject to s106 agreements and resolution of outstanding issues with National Highways, in February 2024. The project was brought forward as a ‘hybrid’ application, typical of developments this size, made up of outline and detailed elements. The first 44 homes at the northern end of the site, designed by Ash Sakula Architects in collaboration with Periscope, Whitby Wood and Expedition Engineering, have full planning permission. Other elements of the project, including a further 641 homes, 3,568m2 of business, employment and flexible workspace, a health centre and hotel, will be designed in detail and brought forward through Reserved Matters Applications (RMAs). Work will start on the Phoenix in early 2025, with the first homes available in 2027; the project is due to be completed by 2030.
How is the Phoenix connected to Human Nature?
Human Nature, a campaigning development company, acquired the Phoenix site in April 2021. The company was founded in 2015 by Jonathan Smales and Michael Manolson, two former Greenpeace directors, and grew out of Beyond Green, a leading UK consultancy in sustainable development. It designs, builds and runs intrinsically sustainable places, where it is easy to live happy, healthy and sustainable lives. Much of the Human Nature team is based in Lewes and its offices are at Phoenix House on the site, which will be retained and refitted for the new neighbourhood. Human Nature has brought together a world-class professional team to work on the project (see Team
here).
There have been plans to develop this site before, what makes this project different?
There is a long history of failed proposals on this site. The previous owner of the land, Santon, acquired planning consent in spring 2016 for its North Street Quarter, but, after three years with little or no progress made, put the land up for sale. The previous scheme is widely considered to be financially unviable due to the ratio between low housing numbers and very high infrastructure costs – such as site remediation and flood defences to infrastructure and various planning requirements including the provision of land for the health centre and a new footbridge. Human Nature put forward a new financially viable scheme which includes a higher number and greater range of homes.
How will the Phoenix benefit Lewes?
The project will provide 685 new homes, designed to meet the housing need in Lewes, including 206 affordable homes, which will be designated as either First Homes (discounted by 30% against the market value) or as affordable rent (at a level of rent which does not exceed Local Housing Allowance). See What is meant by ‘affordable living?, below.
The Phoenix will also bring an abundance of new public space to the town, including eight public gardens and squares and four community buildings, containing a low-cost canteen, creative workspace, events space and taproom, and sport, wellbeing and fitness centre. A new river walk will run the length of the site, rising to a Belvedere in the centre where a footbridge will connect to Malling Recreation Ground. A cycle route will run through the neighbourhood and across the Causeway, with a new foreshore park connecting the river’s edge to Eastgate Street.
The neighbourhood will also bring much in the way of investment and employment. This includes £15m invested in new flood defences and river walk; an uplift of £3.9m for the local economy each year; and more than 500 construction jobs and 380 permanent jobs.
What is your flood strategy?
Human Nature will add to the existing flood defences along the river with a new flood wall to defend the site against the one in 100 year event, including an allowance for climate change, designed for a 120-year life. The Pells area, including the Pells Pool plant room and the Pelham Terrace neighbourhood, will be provided with a similar level of protection through carefully designed defences which have been worked up in discussion with the Pells and St John’s residents.
New flood defences at the southern end of Talbot Terrace will also protect the neighbourhood from flooding from the railway. A sustainable drainage strategy has also been developed in close coordination with Southern Water, the Environment Agency and East Sussex County Council. Rain gardens (a type of sustainable drainage system) within streets and in courtyards will be created to hold storm water when high river levels do not permit river discharge.
What’s your energy strategy?
The homes and other buildings on the Phoenix will be powered by on-site photovoltaics (PV), and through an off-site renewable energy facility, on a data-led energy management system. Heat will be provided through ground source heat pumps, delivering district heating on an ambient loop. This means that heat produced can be transported around the site more efficiently and that any heat rejected, for example from a commercial refrigeration system, is reused elsewhere in the neighborhood, reducing waste and increasing overall system efficiency. Combined with well-built apartments that are approaching, or in some cases reaching, Passivhaus standards, the cost of living can be significantly reduced. (See What is meant by ‘affordable living?, below).
How is the Phoenix providing for younger people?
The Phoenix will be a place where young people can live, work and play. The Soap Factory will contain activities aimed at younger people and provide a new home for youth music organisation Starfish, while generous public squares and gardens will give new places to socialise and play. There will also be employment and training opportunities: in partnership with East Sussex College, Human Nature will be providing training programmes on the Phoenix. There will also be a number of low-rent commercial units and work spaces on the site.
The Phoenix will contain many smaller homes, compact apartments, a proportion at rent tied to local housing allowance levels and First Homes (homes to buy at a discounted price for first-time buyers), enabling young people to stay in Lewes. The site will also enable affordable living through lower energy bills; access to car hire and car club services, which mean there will be less need to own a car; a low-cost community canteen and shared facilities.
How is the Phoenix providing for older people?
The Phoenix has been designed to accommodate people of all ages. It will be a place where intergenerational living and mixing helps foster a sense of community, reducing loneliness. Many elements of the Phoenix will particularly appeal to older people, with the principle of shared living – of space, amenities and ideas – often highlighted in our focus groups. This will be a safe and accessible neighbourhood – with streets for people, not cars – and all amenities within a five-minute walk, wheel or cycle. The Phoenix will also appeal to those looking to downsize, with many one and two-bedrooms homes available. The Foundry Health Care Centre will also be located on the site. (See How will you ensure the neighbourhood is accessible?)
How will the influx of people affect schools and other infrastructure in Lewes?
A nursery will be built on the Phoenix, but there is sufficient capacity in existing local schools for the children who will live at the Phoenix, according to data from East Sussex County Council, which identifies falling school rolls; indeed, three schools have closed in Lewes in recent years. The scheme will provide the new health centre for the town, which will accommodate the growing Foundry Healthcare practice (See Why are you delivering a health centre?). Furthermore, the Phoenix will generate £5.3m through the Community Infrastructure Levy, which will be invested in local services.
What is the parking and mobility strategy for the Phoenix?
The Phoenix has been designed in a way that means most of its residents won’t need to own a private car – space traditionally used for private driveways will instead be put to communal use: shared courtyards, playgrounds and rain gardens, creating streets safe for children to play in. Largely, this will be achieved in three ways: by providing mostly daily needs within a short walk, wheel or cycle (either in the neighbourhood or the wider town); maximising connectivity to the rest of Lewes, through cycle and walking routes; and providing convenient and affordable mobility services.
A Co-Mobility Hub, at the southern tip of the site on the Causeway, will keep traffic out of the Phoenix and off the one-way system around Lewes. Although there will be on-street Blue Badge parking and drop-off spaces along North Street and Phoenix Place, the majority of vehicles will be parked in one of the 313 spaces in the Hub, with priority given to Blue Badge holders and residents who need a vehicle for work as well as for those visiting the town. The Co-Mobility Hub is located next to the health centre. Forty-five of these spaces will be reserved for electric car-club vehicles, which can be hired when needed. The impact that vehicle sharing can have is huge, significantly reducing the need to own a private vehicle. For example,
according to data from CoMoUk, one club car replaces 20 private vehicles. There will also be secure cycle parking spaces across the site.
Our modelling, created in association with transport specialists WSP, has shown that the parking provided will meet the future requirements of the new neighbourhood as well as the visitors to the town. There is strong appetite for this way of living, particularly among younger generations, with two-thirds of people who have registered an interest in living at the Phoenix, naming ‘low-car neighbourhood’ as one of the main attractions of the project. We also know from the 2021 census data that over 45% of people living in central Lewes already do without ownership of a car or van.
How will you ensure the neighbourhood is accessible?
The Phoenix has been designed as an inclusive and accessible environment to allow all to enjoy it with confidence, dignity and independence. Public spaces will be designed with an emphasis on easy orientation, good legibility and clear routes through the site for all users. Human Nature is working with local specialist groups including Lewes Area Access Group to address the needs of everyone including wheelchair and rollator users, guide dog assisted, cane users and those with visual impairments. We also have a specialist Working Group, made up of members of the Lewes community, who will continue to advise us as further plans are detailed designs are brought forward.
The new homes proposed across the site will exceed national requirements for accessibility. Lift access will be provided for the majority of homes above ground floor, exceeding the requirements of the South Downs National Park Authority (SDNPA) for Accessible & Adaptable dwellings and Wheelchair Accessible dwellings. Blue Badge holders will be able to park near their homes and priority will be given in the Co-Mobility Hub to users of the health centre. All new public buildings will be fully accessible and meet the requirements of the Equality Act.
Why are you delivering a health centre?
Human Nature is delivering a new state-of-the-art health centre on request of the NHS and Foundry Healthcare. The health centre will not only enable services to be transferred from existing buildings that are not fit for purpose, but will enable further service development and space for integration with mental health, community services, and the voluntary sector. The new building, which is fully accessible to people with disabilities, will provide additional capacity required to meet the existing needs of the local population and the anticipated additional growth from the proposed development.
The health centre is a condition of the sale of the land owned by Lewes District Council and will be built in the early stage of the development. The building includes space for GP consultation rooms, small procedure treatment rooms, pharmacy, mental health services and a dentist, based on Foundry’s brief, which is designed to meet the needs of a new generation of services. The building will be adjacent to the Co-Mobility Hub with car parking, bus lay bys and a few minutes walk from the centre of town. Ambulance, paramedic and Blue Badge parking for people with disabilities will be provided on the site, with drop off and pick up parking spaces next to the building.
How will you minimise the impact of construction traffic on the surrounding areas?
A temporary construction access ramp will be constructed in the initial construction phase of the Phoenix. This will reduce, almost to the point of zero, construction-traffic impacts on the sensitive, narrow streets in the town centre for the duration of the phased construction of the Phoenix. A right-turn-in only (off the Phoenix Causeway) will ensure all construction traffic will be routed from the Cuilfail roundabout, preventing construction traffic from joining the one-way system with the associated air quality, noise and visual implications.
How is the project funded?
Human Nature and its local investors have funded the land acquisition and the current programme of work on planning, design and engineering and this provides the core equity in the scheme. Turning to construction and delivery, the Phoenix is eligible for funding from Homes England given its strong alignment with national government policy in relation to its use of brownfield land, the mix of housing types being provided, innovative construction, placemaking, public engagement and bold response to climate and nature emergencies.
Given the focus of the development on innovative ways to build and deliver homes sustainably, we are attracting significant interest from a multiplicity of investors from family offices, to pension funds to banks who wish to invest in this type of development. Happily, there is an increasing number of investors who wish to meet their newly ambitious Environmental, Social and Governance goals (ESG). There is also bespoke, specialist investment available for affordable housing delivery and for ventures on the site including the hotel, energy grid and mobility services.
What is meant by ‘affordable housing’?
The Phoenix will provide accommodation that reflects the genuine housing need of Lewes. This means a high number of one and two-bedroom homes, particularly aimed at young people, young families, and older people who are looking to downsize. These types of homes are rare in Lewes – a town where housing supply is not meeting demand, resulting in rising prices, falling school numbers and an ageing population, with younger people moving away. Housing that is genuinely affordable for local people is key to the success of the Phoenix as a truly inclusive neighbourhood.
There will be 206 affordable homes (30% of the total number). These are:
– First Homes, which must be discounted by 30% against the market value and be sold to first-time buyers, as defined by the government
– Affordable rented housing, which must be at a level of rent which does not exceed the Local Housing Allowance for the area. The two or three-bedroom homes within this category can be defined as Lewes Low-Cost Housing, a bespoke category of affordable housing introduced by the Lewes Neighbourhood Plan and defined as “the maximum cost affordable on the average Lewes salary”.
Furthermore, those living at the Phoenix will enjoy lower utility bills due to the neighbourhood’s highly efficient homes, which are powered by renewable energy on a data-led grid. Those who take advantage of the on-site co-mobility services; the community canteen, which serves low-cost seasonal food; and the reuse and repair centres, will see further savings.
What is the density of the Phoenix and how high are the buildings?
Getting density right is one of the keys to a successful new neighbourhood. The density of the Phoenix will be 95 dwellings per hectare, which according to the government's Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment (CABE), puts it at the lower end of what it calls 'historic town infill' and just below midway in the metric for 'urban villages’. It is lower than the core of historic Lewes, which was built at a time when the population of the UK was at less than a tenth of what it is today.
This is a brownfield site and we intend to use it wisely, negating the need to build on greenfield sites on the edge of town. Suburban estates are very low-density (15-30 dwellings per hectare) and therefore take up a great deal of land. They often lack infrastructure and amenities (such as schools and places to eat), meaning they create a dependency on cars. This increases traffic in nearby towns in a way that the low-traffic Phoenix will not (See What is the parking and mobility strategy for the Phoenix? above).
In an age of climate breakdown, scarcity of land and a housing shortage, we must make the best possible use of these increasingly rare and precious sites, housing a wide mix of people well – particularly in a town such as Lewes where the working age population is declining, with very few places for young people and young families to prosper. The buildings on the Phoenix are between three and six storeys. Such heights are considered to be human-scale if the streets and other public spaces are well-proportioned – an appropriate and enjoyable size at street level and from afar, and common in towns and cities up and down the country.
Our proposals have been subject to a Landscape Visual Impact Assessment, which concludes the development will not harm views that contribute to the South Downs National Park’s Special Quality, and will provide some new views to the Downs and the Castle. The architecture is bound by a Design Code (See Will it look like Lewes? below), to ensure coherence across the site and visual connection to the town.
How will the shared areas be managed and maintained over time?
An estate management company, ran by Human Nature and residents of the Phoenix, will manage all communal aspects of the neighbourhood and retain ownership of all green infrastructure, public realm, sustainable drainage and flood defences. Tenants and residents of the site will be invited to participate in the running of the company, with a service charge proportioned between residential and commercial units. Public spaces will be protected in perpetuity and any surplus made by the estate management company will be reinvested into site improvement and maintenance.
How will you deal with sewage? Is there capacity for a new neighbourhood?
Utilities companies' failures to prevent untreated wastewater from being discharged into our waterways and oceans are predominantly due to archaic sewerage networks whereby surface water drainage and foul (or waste) water are discharged into the same ('combined') sewer. The Phoenix drainage design ensures all onsite combined sewers are replaced with separate surface and foul water drainage systems. Furthermore, the redesigned drainage network for the Phoenix ensures that all surface water runoff from the site is discharged into the river, preventing any additional stress on existing combined sewers offsite. The surface water drainage network for the scheme is characterised by 'sustainable drainage features' (SuDS); biodiverse landscaping features which store and clean surface water, thereby reducing flood risk and helping to remove diffuse urban pollutants from the runoff before discharge into the river.
As it was considered inappropriate to treat foul water onsite in an urban environment, the Phoenix will discharge foul water into Southern Water's existing network. Southern Water has confirmed there is sufficient capacity in the network to deal with foul water arising from the Phoenix. Furthermore, the wastewater treatment works, for which it is assumed the foul water from the Phoenix will be treated at, is due to have 'thermal hydrolysis process' plant installed, thereby increasing its capacity to deal with wastewater throughput and manage it more sustainably by using resultant biogas to generate renewable heat and electricity. We hope to reduce water use to no more than 90 litres per person per day, through the use of efficient water fittings and maximising opportunities for water reuse and recycling. This will contribute to significantly reducing wastewater flows from the Phoenix into the sewer system.
Will it look like Lewes?
A Design Code, which has been created upon the advice of local experts and with detailed reference to the existing Conservation Area Character Appraisal, will control the overall character and appearance of the development to deliver consistency and coherence across as each ‘parcel’ of the site is brought forward. It identifies a series of ‘golden threads’, which will create a visual connection to the town – from its famous roofscape to its creative use of materials, patterns and collage – in ways that can be translated to a new kind of neighbourhood fit for the 21st century. The Phoenix will stitch into and connect to Lewes, taking influence from its existing architecture, economy and its history of independence and freethinking. Human Nature is working with some of the best architects in the country to create a place that is not only beautiful, but challenges the current development model in the UK.
Why is Human Nature proposing to remove trees along the Causeway?
Human Nature is committed to working with local tree experts alongside our consultants on the detail of how the tree work and wider landscape proposals will be carried out, to ensure that tree loss is minimised, the phasing reduces any visual and ecological impacts, and that we maximise the opportunities for adding to the town-wide Lewes Urban Arboretum through the proposed planting of 250 trees (many semi-mature) across the Phoenix. We accept that we could and should have done more to engage local specialists on this matter, and we have committed to new studies as we bring forward detailed design. This area, just off the Causeway, is of crucial importance to the success of the Phoenix and its relationship to Lewes centre and river.
Our proposals seek to ‘stitch’ into the existing urban landscape, and has been designed with wider environmental goals and benefits for the town in mind, as follows:
– To provide access to a temporary construction ramp during the construction phase of the Phoenix. This will reduce to the point of almost eliminating construction-traffic impacts on the sensitive, narrow streets in the town centre for the duration of the
phased construction of the Phoenix (See How will you minimise the impact of construction traffic on the surrounding areas?)
– To include bus lay-bys in this location which will allow easy bus connection into the site and town centre which could be part of a new bus provision for the wider town if required in the future subject to how the ongoing debate and action to address the bus station resolve. This is at the very least an important contingency and a gesture the Phoenix is making to the future of bus transport here.
– To provide access to a new Co-Mobility Hub. This is an essential component of the Phoenix, providing wider mobility services for the town (including shuttle buses). It serves to significantly reduce the need for private cars, meaning considerably lower transport emissions than in traditional developments, keeping
traffic off the one-way system and improving local air quality. This includes reductions in delivery traffic through the adoption of a ‘last-mile’ freight service, operated by cargo bike. (See What is the parking and mobility strategy for the Phoenix?)
– The South Downs National Park gave us a clear steer that the proposals must ‘humanise’ the Causeway edge, encouraging sustainable mobility and stitching the new development into the wider town, both physically and visually. This will involve transforming this area into an active space with facilities, including a cycle, wheeler and pedestrian friendly route on the north side of the Causeway, benches, and a new park, creating a much friendlier edge to what is currently a forbidding and dangerous highway connection into the town which is not currently used frequently or certainly enjoyed by many people.
