Westmorland to unlock long-awaited 800-home Marina Village

Forming a key part of the town’s regeneration, the 64-acre scheme could provide more than 30% of the borough’s housing need to 2031.

Westmorland and Furness Council’s cabinet will meet next week to formally decide whether to accept almost £25m of brownfield funding from Homes England to remediate the Marina Village site, located off Cavendish Dock Road. 

The first phase of enabling work to prepare the site for redevelopment completed in November and was paid for with £5.5m from the government’s Get Building Fund. 

The additional brownfield funding, if accepted, would enable the completion of infrastructure work across the entire council-owned site. 

Westmorland and Furness’s cabinet is also expected to pull the trigger on a period of consultation on a strategic planning document for Marina Village at next week’s meeting. 

The council has been working with consultancy Cushman & Wakefield on the vision for the site. 

The Barrow Borough Local Plan identifies this site as a strategic housing allocation which has an indicative yield of 650 homes. It accounts for a little over one-third of the total allocated housing to 2031 within the local plan and is one of the largest housing sites within the new Westmorland and Furness Authority. 

The redevelopment of the Marina Village site has been a long-held ambition of the council. In 2008, Carlisle-based Story Group was selected to develop the £120m scheme by West Lakes Renaissance, the urban regeneration company for Furness and West Cumbria, together with Barrow Council. 

However, the project stalled due to the financial crash.