What, if anything, will be built on Merton Meadow?

Mixed signals have recently been given on whether ambitious plans to develop Hereford’s largest ground-level car park for new housing will actually go ahead.

A draft masterplan for the city, published by Herefordshire’s previous administration nearly two years ago before it was voted out of office, proposed transforming the Merton Meadows site to the north of the city centre.

The “flood-prone” car park was to be become “a vibrant, mixed-use, intergenerational urban village”, which would “grow around major new green spaces and urban wetlands” and would “be within easy walking and cycling distance of the city centre and the city’s new transport hub”.

A mix of affordable and open-market homes, student and retirement living and commercial space on Merton Meadows and other council-owned land was to be the first phase of the plan.

Government funding of up to £800,000 “to masterplan the area including the detailed flood alleviation design” was approved by the council last September, with contractors to carry this out having since been appointed.

The council will have to hand the money back if it is not spent by the end of this year, while work must begin on-site by November, under terms of the £2-million Brownfield Land Release Fund award which the council accepted as long ago as October 2021.

It said at the time this “will be used towards a flood alleviation scheme to reduce flood risk to the area by restoring parts of the natural floodplain and creating wetlands” and also that it would “unlock” 190 affordable-tenure homes and an “80-bed all-age care facility”.

Meanwhile, “producing a parking strategy for the city” is among the council’s goals for the current financial year – that is, by the start of April, according to its current delivery plan.

“The car parking strategy considers current and future needs for the city, including how we can make further provision for parking that might be lost if [emphasis added] the Merton Meadow sites are developed,” the council said this month.

This is not the first time the current, minority-Conservative administration has sounded cool on proposals in the draft city masterplan, on which it has said very little since taking power in May 2023.

Last September it described the planned publicly accessible wetland to the immediate east of Merton Meadow merely as “a possible”, despite pressure from campaigners to get on with it.

The Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government was asked what would happen if the funding were not spent in time toward the council’s original proposals.