Thoresby Colliery plans approved for 800 homes and business park

The local council has approved plans for a mixed-use development on the site of Thoresby Colliery in Edwinstowe.

Newark and Sherwood District Council planning committee approved the application from real estate investors Harworth Group plc at a meeting on Thursday, October 19.

The current masterplan provides for new housing, a retirement village, a primary school, a 25-acre business park, leisure facilities, and a 300-acre country park and is expected to help create between 500 and 1,000 new jobs.

Harworth chief executive Owen Michaelson said: “This will deliver homes, jobs and investment to the Midlands and is a significant achievement for Harworth.

Planning consultants staged an exhibition at the former colliery so members of the public could see what the future had in store.

“It is also further demonstration of our team’s expertise in taking complex industrial sites and, through our planning expertise, transforming them into sustainable developments for the benefit of local communities.”

He added: “Deals like this cement Harworth’s reputation as the leading provider of sustainable regeneration projects across the north of England and the Midlands.

The developers say it will take up to ten years to fully transform the 450-acre site, which borders Sherwood Forest - but the first phase will see land for around 150 homes sold to builders as serviced plots in 2018.

The company aquired the site in 2015, following the closure of the colliery – which had been Nottinghamshire’s last working deep mine.

Harworth has spent the last two years undertaking site safety and security works, including demolishing redundant industrial structures, whilst masterplanning the site for future uses.