Developer Hawksworth Securities reveals it is close to submitting third plan to transform Peterborough's North Westgate

A developer says he is hopeful of submitting a new planning application later this year to transform Peterborough’s derelict North Westgate.

Peter Breach, chairman of Hawksworth Securities, is aiming to get what will be his third application for the 4.6 hectares site before Peterborough City Council planning officers by the summer.

The plans would be an outline application that envisages a largely residential and hotel development.

Mr Breach, who is the largest landowner in North Westgate, said: “I met with senior officers from Peterborough City Council in December last year.

"It was a useful meeting and Hawksworth is still actively working on this project.

"Obviously we have to come up with plans that have a very good chance of being commercially profitable and offer something that is in demand.

"But I am hoping to get this submitted later this year.”

Hawksworth’s previous attempts to develop North Westgate include a planning application in 2003 that was rejected by councillors and a second in 2015 that proposed a £150 million cinema-led hotel, offices and retail development.

The second application was granted in 2018 but that approval lapsed three years later .

But Mr Breach says the viability of those plans was undermined by councillors when they also gave the go ahead to a cinema-led development at the neighbouring Queensgate shopping centre. Mr Beach said two cinemas in such close proximity would not work and Queensgate looked certain to be first to get its cinema built.

He said: “The North Westgate site is so large that it can only be developed by working with the council.

And he added: “We’ll just have to see how things evolve this time.”

Mr Breach’s comments come after the release of a video by the council in which its growth and regeneration director Nick Carter and its special projects lead Jim Newton discuss bringing a development forward for North Westgate in two years’ time.

Mr Carter says the council is looking at “ways of assembling this site ourselves, maybe looking at using the council’s own powers of intervention to ensure this development comes forward in the next 24 months.”