Welcome to the Hammonds Farm Chelmsford Development Vision
We are in the early stages of developing proposals for an East Chelmsford Garden Community that will help meet the future needs of residents as the city continues to prosper and grow.
The Council’s plan for future growth is being prepared via the Chelmsford Local Plan Review .
The purpose of this website is to give residents and interested local people information on Hammonds Farm development as our proposals evolve in parallel with this process.
Hammonds Farm Chelmsford
Located along the River Chelmer (outside the flood plain), Hammonds Farm is an ideal place to deliver much-needed housing and improve connectivity across east Chelmsford, but there is so much more on offer for new and existing residents.
Our expert team, led by Wates, are planning an inspiring place for people to live healthy and successful lives where they are supported by social infrastructure from the outset. A place for family success, where children and young people feel safe, valued and welcome.
Hammonds will enhance wildlife, improve public access to nature, recreation and provide spaces that encourage participation, activity and improve wellbeing.
Our Proposal
The East Chelmsford Garden Community (Hammonds Farm) will be a large enough settlement to deliver all the components of a successful new community in line with the TCPA Garden City Principles and long term stewardship.
Our proposals include around 4,500 homes (of which 3,000 will be delivered by 2041) alongside a range of local shops, workspaces and community facilities including a new through-school (secondary, primary and early years) and two further primary schools (with co-located early years) and three new stand-alone early years and childcare nurseries. Our ambition is to provide 1 new job for every new home with 43,000m2 of new employment floorspace to be delivered by 2041 helping to retain talent within Chelmsford.
Central to Hammonds is an ‘eastern orbital’ public transport system designed to improve mobility and connections to Beaulieu Park Station and Sandon Park and Ride. Existing communities will have a wider choice of more sustainable and active transport modes including new bus services and safe walking and cycling routes into the city.
Hammonds will deliver a 146 hectare Country Park and open up 4km of public space along the River Chelmer and 15 kms of paths for everyone to enjoy with opportunities for water sports and cycling, other forms of recreation and access to nature. Green infrastructure will also be threaded through the living, working and learning spaces, making the most of close connections to nature, mitigating landscape impacts, preserving and enhancing the historic environment, delivering biodiversity net gain and importantly reducing the incidence of flooding across the wider catchment area.
Our Vision for the East Chelmsford Garden Community
Our vision for Hammonds is to build a new community in East Chelmsford that delivers family and community success. To create opportunities and remove physical and social barriers so people can progress more easily in life to reach their full potential. This is a deeply rooted vision supported throughout the project team.
Our early-stage proposals are based on three guiding principles:
FAIRER
Creating a place that can be called home, providing the right ingredients for family and community success.
CONNECTED
Ensuring that households have everything they need on their doorstep – a connected place promoting travel by walking, cycling and public transport.
GREENER
Embracing net zero from the outset, for healthier lives and a healthier planet.
Hammonds Farm will be a bustling garden community in East Chelmsford with well-located childcare, family hub services, training and educational opportunities available for people to access locally. A particular focus will be placed on support for early years and child-friendly design.
We will focus not just on the physical aspects of building a place and how it will look, but on how it functions, delivers the right services, and embraces opportunities that help people to thrive.
Hammonds Farm will provide a broad mix of homes and workspaces in East Chelmsford to meet a wide range of needs. This includes high quality, energy efficient and affordable homes, including provision for local key workers, families, and older people. Our homes will be net zero from the outset, with onsite renewable energy generation.
We are committed to developing our proposals in conjunction with existing communities and offering best-practice design, stewardship and future management of the new community.
The Timetable
Our plans for the East Chelmsford Garden Community (Hammonds Farm) are being developed alongside Chelmsford City Council’s review of its Local Plan.
In March 2024, this process identified Hammonds as a proposed site allocation in the Preferred Options Local Plan, which is now subject to public consultation.
We now plan to develop our early-stage proposals through the remainder of 2024/25 alongside the later stages of the council’s Local Plan process.
An important part of this next step will be to undertake engagement with the local community to help shape the plans.
Quarter 4 2025 Independent Examination (Regulation 20)
Quarter 2 2024 Formal Regulation 18 Consultation
(Preferred Options)
Quarter 4 2024 Submission Local Plan Consultation (Regulation 19)
Quarter 3 2025 Submission of Local Plan to Secretary of State (Regulation 20, 22 and 35)
Quarter 1 2026 Inspector’s Report and Adoption of Local Plan (Regulations 20 and 35)
Source: Chelmsford City Council Local Development Scheme (Version 8)
More Information
We will publish project documents here as our proposals evolve.
Frequently Asked Questions
WHERE AND WHAT IS HAMMONDS?
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Hammonds Farm is located on land to the north east of junction 18 of the A12 on the edge of Chelmsford. The site includes areas east and west of the A12 and Hammonds Road and includes a long stretch of the River Chelmer.
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Early proposals for the East Chelmsford Garden Community are to create a new residential community with around 4,500 homes alongside new infrastructure, education, healthcare and employment and training spaces.
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We want local people to play an active part in planning and shaping the new community. If the site is allocated within Chelmsford City Council’s Local Plan, we’ll be running a full consultation programme to give people the opportunity to contribute to our emerging plans.
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We have had meetings with officers at Chelmsford City Council and Essex County Council as part of the Local Plan review process. We have engaged with councillors and planning officers, whilst they met with a number of different landowners and developers seeking to identify the most appropriate locations to support their future housing growth needs.
COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT
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We propose to create a place that includes a wide variety of housing types, tenures and urban form where people with all kinds of needs, ages and circumstances can live well. This means high quality, energy efficient homes, set within well-planned urban streets offering communal and public open space, workspace, play and community facilities. We want to promote long term housing security, and allow people to stay close to neighbours and extended families, which is important to build a lasting community.
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Chelmsford’s popularity as a place to live means that there is a pressing local need for new homes to enable local people to remain in the area for the long term. Provision of affordable housing will be an important part of the proposals. Hammonds will take an informed approach, working with Chelmsford City Council to develop the right housing mix and the types of affordable housing so that local people can access housing they can afford.
NEW HOMES
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Of primary importance in planning Hammonds Farm is the commitment to family and community success. The Hammonds Vision places a priority around the needs of young people and families, and this sits at the heart of the ideas for this new neighbourhood. Understanding the specific needs of different ages, groups and people means that we can offer opportunities that do not come from the development of smaller communities. Health and wellbeing, whether through active travel, sport and recreation, local food growing, or through having a cohesive and involved community, will be a core part of how Hammonds Farm comes forward.
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We will deliver a new GP surgery and healthcare facility on site, in addition to a healthy environment where walking, recreation, sport, play, social activities and access to nature for good mental health are well supported and actively encouraged. This provision will also benefit nearby communities.
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We will deliver a new through school (secondary and primary school with early years) and two further primary schools, as well as three stand-alone nursery and early years provision on site, so that all children can go to school locally, and pressure is not placed on other local schools. This provision will also benefit nearby communities.
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The vision for Hammonds aspires to create a child friendly community. This means planning for all aspects of our daily lives where work, family life and culture co-exist, and to help all children to flourish. The strategic scale of Hammonds means full consideration of new civic and community infrastructure including primary and secondary schools and childcare facilities is at the heart of our vision. We aspire to shape a community that can nurture and grow care-giving networks and make a place where children and young people feel safe, valued and welcome.
We will create a new country park as part of Hammonds for everyone in Chelmsford to enjoy. This will establish a new recreational destination in Chelmsford, reactivating 4km of riverside, providing 15km of new paths and over 146ha of biodiverse parkland and sporting facilities. The Country Park is envisaged as a regional sport and leisure attraction with cycling, walking, running and open water swimming training opportunities. A great opportunity also exists to provide a canoe and paddleboard hire centre. Opening up access to the land would allow local people to use the park for more leisurely pursuits such as walking, fishing, pleasure boating and dog-walking.
There will be modern facilities with inclusive access, alongside a full range of cycling, sports and play facilities, including those specially designed with women and girls in mind, and opportunities for peaceful access to nature.
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It’s increasingly important for people to be able to work and find childcare close to home. Hammonds will support Chelmsford’s economic growth with a business park, local employment spaces, training hubs and excellent co-located childcare provision. Small business hubs at Hammonds will allow business to expand flexibly as well as contributing to vibrant daytime activity. Our aim is to give everyone a fair chance to access work opportunities, allowing households to combine family and working lives. Alongside the provision of new schools, opportunities for skills and training are also being planned to ensure that everyone can participate, including during the construction and development phases of Hammonds.
HEALTHY LIVING, A CHILD-FRIENDLY PLACE, AMENITIES & INFRASTRUCTURE
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New bus, walking and cycling routes will connect the community to the new Beaulieu Park rail station being built to the north, and to Chelmsford City Centre and other employment areas. A new bus bridge will be built over the A12 to provide fast and direct sustainable transport links into key areas of the city. Private cars will be able to access the development from Junction 18 and 19, as well as from the A414 to the south.
A comprehensive strategy is being planned to make green modes of transport – walking, cycling and public transport, as attractive and user-friendly as possible, and these will capitalise on the River Chelmer corridor that connects the site into the City.
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Hammonds is located between two of the city’s most important transport hubs: Sandon Park and Ride and the new Beaulieu Park Station. We propose to deliver a new sustainable, low-carbon transport corridor, connecting the two major transport hubs at Beaulieu Park Train Station and Sandon Park and Ride.
Active travel (walking and cycling) will be designed into the structure of Hammonds, in a way that is both efficient, well planned and easy to use. This focus on the quality of experience will help residents to opt for greener transport modes from the outset with measures targeting a 60% sustainable mode share.
TRANSPORT LINKS
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Hammonds Farm will bring positive benefits to biodiversity in transforming farmland which is of low ecological value into a landscape-led masterplan featuring natural spaces, public parks, gardens, green transport routes, meadow parklands and protected habitats for wildlife. The flood plain will not be built on.
Careful masterplanning and landscape design will mitigate landscape impacts while protecting and enhancing the historic environment.
The Country Park at Hammonds will establish a new recreational destination in Chelmsford, reactivating 4km of riverside, providing 15km of new paths and over 146ha of biodiverse parkland and sporting facilities. The park will be designed to reinforce the special historic, architectural and scenic value of the area.
The creation of new habitats and ecological corridors along the River Chelmer and the Sandon Brook, which are key landscape features. Their biodiversity value can be enhanced (20% biodiversity net gain) and managed as a result of the development.
Local habitats and biodiversity associated with the River Chelmer and its floodplain can be enhanced and protected, and new water meadows and wetlands created. A Nature Reserve in part of the site would help manage public access, to ensure space is provided for nesting birds to thrive without disturbance.
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New homes at Hammonds will not be built on the floodplain. By incorporating a system of sustainable urban drainage, the development will be protected from flooding, and a series of landscape features will actively manage water within streets and parks and prevent future flooding as our climate changes.
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Responding to the current climate emergency is a core facet of our plans. Examples of this thinking include careful consideration of tree and plant species to ensure the greatest carbon capture possible.
As a long-term and strategic scale new development, Hammonds presents a real opportunity to embed sustainable living into the community from the start to create a place where people and nature thrive. It has the potential to contribute to Chelmsford’s targets for net zero and provide on-site renewable energy generation that is a model for future development.
The development will be net zero carbon from the outset. At least 40% of energy for the new development will come from renewable energy on buildings onsite, with the potential for a greater contribution from purpose built renewable energy generation on site.
ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT
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The landowners of the site appointed Grosvenor to shape the vision and promote Hammonds Farm through Chelmsford City Council’s Local Plan review.
Grosvenor’s focus is on creating places where communities, business and nature thrive. Read more about us here.
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The landowners of the site appointed Wates as Master Developer to masterplan and deliver the development including the detailed planning stages and to manage the infrastructure and build-out process, to ensure high standards for design and delivery across the project.
Wates are one of the UK’s leading family-owned development, building and property maintenance companies. We are focused on creating sustainable places that people love to live and work in.
Read more about us here.
WHO’S INVOLVED?
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The site is being promoted through the council’s Local Plan review. In March 2024, this process identified Hammonds Farm as a proposed site allocation, which is now subject to public consultation. The Local Plan has an intended adoption date in 2026.
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We will only begin applying for planning permission after the site allocation is adopted in the council’s Local Plan. The community will be consulted upon the development of a masterplan, which will guide future planning applications.
THE PLANNING PROCESS