Lendlease’s £1.9bn Birmingham Smithfield plans recommended again for approval | News

Lendlease’s £1.9bn Birmingham Smithfield scheme returns to the council’s planning committee next week with another recommendation for approval.

The 4,000-home scheme in the city center was poised to go ahead last month, but a decision was delayed after councilors and campaigners said a park and public square were too small.

A number of renowned architects are working on the plans, located next to the city’s Bull Ring shopping centre, including Stirling Prize winner Haworth Tompkins, as well as dRMM, Intervention Architecture, Minesh Patel Architects and RCKa, with James Corner Field Operations designing the public realm and landscape.

The amended plans have now increased the size of the proposed Smithfield Park by 23% and provided more detail on how it can connect to other public spaces in the scheme.

A new report by planning officers also said another park, Manor Square, was large enough to host “large-scale” public events of up to 6,900 people.

Although the report said public spaces still fell short of planning policy requirements, it said the amendments “addressed the committee’s previous concerns about the proposed indicative scheme”.

Officers have recommended the revised plans for approval ahead of the local authority’s next planning committee hearing on June 13.

But the future of the 17ha scheme has been thrown into doubt by last week’s decision by Birmingham council’s development partner Lendlease to pull out of the UK.

Lendlease has announced that the firm will sell its overseas construction and development arms to focus on its home market in Australia.

Lendlease was first appointed as development partner for Smithfield in January 2019, beating a pitch from a team featuring Delancey and Qatari Diar. Other bidders included a team with Hammerson and Bouygues.

The work has been hit by a series of setbacks, including an intervention from Historic England, which said the original plans submitted in 2022 would damage Birmingham’s historic landscape and “disturb significant medieval remains”.

This led to a one-year delay and a number of design changes, including the addition of a second staircase, increasing the height of the building by up to 10m and 500 additional dwellings.

Also on the project team are Aecom as QS, DP9 as planning consultant, Turner & Townsend as lead adviser to Lendlease, structural engineer Arup, transport and civil engineer WSP and heritage consultant Montagu Evans.

Lendlease has been contacted for comment.