Homes with view of St James' Park proposed as part of Newcastle city centre development

Plans for 66 flats on the Newcastle Helix site outline innovative scheme for flexible housing

Affordable homes with a view of St James’ Park could be built as part of the £350m Newcastle Helix development.

Plans for three housing blocks containing 66 individual homes have been lodged with Newcastle City Council, with developers saying the proposals would create a new type of housing in the city.

The development has seen a number of organisations - including Future Homes Alliance (FHA), Ryder Architecture, Zero Carbon Futures, the Elders Council, the Sustainable Communities Initiative and the Innovation Super Network - come together to plan housing that flexible to change for residents’ needs.

Homes will feature innovative concepts such as moveable partitions, so rooms and layout can be changed to suit the changing needs of different households.

The FHA is working in partnership with Newcastle City Council and its development agent Karbon Homes on the scheme, with blocks of between six and eight storeys being proposed.

Legal and General Capital, the key investor behind the development of Helix, has sponsored Future Homes holding workshops with Ryder Architecture to help design the project.

The buildings will all benefit from a range of communal facilities including gardens, mini-allotments and cycle storage, in moves to make the homes as sustainable and inexpensive to run as possible.

The intention is for up to five ‘demonstrator’ homes to be used by industrial partners as test beds for innovative products, trialling a range of technologies where data can be collected and potentially lead to wider adoption in housebuilding elsewhere.

Amended plans have now been agreed by the Newcastle Helix board and Future Homes Alliance and submitted to Newcastle planners.

The homes will all be affordable, and will be a mixture of social rent and rent to buy, forming part of around 400 homes which will be constructed as part of the residential element of the Helix plans.

The next stage will see the alliance seek expressions of interest from contractors on the Homes England Framework.

Prof Rose Gilroy from Newcastle University, founder and chair of the Future Homes Alliance, said: “It is well known that our quality of life is very dependent on the quality of our housing. Our current housing stock does not respond to our changing lives by allowing adaptation; it does not protect us from fuel poverty or fuel insecurity nor has it embraced new technologies.

“The Future Homes project will throw down a challenge to the housebuilders by creating new ways to live well in cities.”

Ged Walsh, director of development and asset management at Karbon Homes, said: “It’s important for landlords like Karbon to innovate, to explore new ways of providing homes, so we’re excited to be working with our partners in the Future Homes Alliance to bring this new development forward.”

Philip Miller, project architect at Ryder Architecture, said: “The Future Homes development is the embodiment of a collaborative and responsive design process where the needs and aspirations of the community acted as the catalyst for change. The scheme puts the quality of life of its residents at the forefront and enables their homes to change as their needs do, in a sustainable and affordable way.”