26 February 2025
The expertise of our transport team has supported a successful planning application to redevelop Melton Mowbray Cattle Market.
Melton Borough Council has granted permission for the redevelopment of The Stockyard, part of the historic cattle market, into a new events space, three open plan hubs for businesses to produce and sell fresh food, and a three-storey anchor building for manufacturing, production and educational uses.
On behalf of JF Tomlinson, our transport team produced a Transport Assessment, Travel Plan, and Technical Notes to support the application. Specific concerns focused on trip generation, survey day selection and parking.
Our Assistant Transport Engineer, Laura Gregson explains the rationale behind each concern:
“As the current site has so many different land uses e.g. markets, events hall, restaurant, brewery, and the proposed redevelopment would alter this, we needed to liaise with Leicestershire County Council (LCC) to ensure our predicted trip generation was accurate. We undertook traffic surveys and site visits to measure existing flows, and using TRICS software, agreed a trip rate output for the newly proposed units. LCC agreed with our analysis and from here, we proceeded with our standard junction modelling.
“With the new units also likely to increase visitor traffic at weekends, LCC requested weekend surveys and modelling. However, earlier in our assessment we used Automatic Traffic Counts, positioned in two locations near the site, to capture traffic flows across a week. This not only revealed higher traffic flow on weekdays but also captured a weekday with multiple town centre and on-site events, providing a worst-case scenario for the client. This was accepted by LCC and represented a cost-saving for the client as it negated the need for weekend reassessment.
“Finally, we needed to demonstrate the redevelopment would not adversely impact the parking provision, specifically because the proposed units are situated on the existing car park. We recorded a 12hr parking survey on the current car park and combined this data with the previously agreed TRICS outputs to give an accumulation of vehicles per hour across the development. This showed lower estimates than LCC standards, meaning parking could mostly be maintained within the remaining on-site car park, with any overspill directed to existing local car parks.”
Our Associate Director for Transport, Chris Heaney comments: “This project has been a fascinating exercise where our transport engineers have delivered robust, data-driven advice to overcome planning officers’ comments, which has resulted in this successful outcome. The Stockyard redevelopment will significantly boost the town’s visitor footfall and is expected to create in excess of 100 new jobs. We’re proud to have been part of the project team supporting this sustainable new venue.”
For more about The Stockyard, see https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cpqlp9nv8r7o.
Image Credit: Greig and Stephenson Architects
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