Go ahead given for 850 East of England Showground homes and leisure village plans - but proposals for 650 other homes rejected

Multi-million pound plans to build 850 homes and a leisure village on the East of England Showground have been approved – but proposals for 650 other new homes have been turned down..

The go ahead for the development was given today (October 15) following a lengthy meeting of Peterborough City Council’s planning committee at which councillors considered two outline planning applications for the 164 acre site.

The first application involved the construction of 850 homes plus a leisure village, called Cultura Place, and a school, a hotel and a care village.

The second was for 650 homes on part of the site that had already been earmarked for housing in the council’s Local Plan.

The first application was approved by a vote of eight to two.

However, the second was rejected by a vote of six in favour of refusal, three against, and one abstension.

The plans had been submitted by the AEPG, the land promoter, appointed by the East of England Agricultural Society, which owns the Showground but says it no longer needs the venue, which over the decades has hosted many spectacular public events from Truckfest to fireworks.

The venue was also the home of the title-winning speedway team Peterborough Panthers for more than 50 years. But the team has been told it can no longer race at the Showground – a move that has sparked protests from fans locally and further afield.

Council officers had recommended that the planning committee approve the development despite a large number of objections.

But officers told the committee that the benefits of the proposed affordable 250 homes and the leisure village outweighed the ‘adverse impacts of granting planning permission.’

The committee was also told the plans have attracted a total of 1,033 responses from the public.

Some 920 are objections while 53 are in support of the applications. Further letters of support from 56 local organisations have also been received. There were four ‘neutral’ responses.

In April this year, Ashley Butterfield, the chief executive of AEPG, said that operators for the leisure village and a developer for the homes had already been lined up and were ‘ready to go as soon as we get planning approval.”

He said it had been hoped to get ‘spades into the ground’ by April 2025.