September 2026 start for 1,500-home Handforth Garden Village

Balfour Beatty will begin initial preparation and infrastructure works next year on the Cheshire East Council project, a move that will prevent the expiration of planning permission granted in 2023.

Handforth Garden Village was one of the 14 government-designated garden villages announced in 2017. The project, which would sit on 300 acres east of the A34,  includes the building of 1,500 homes; 245,000 sq ft of employment space; a through school; a country park, and a 174-bed extra care scheme.

Cheshire East Council is set to team up with MADE Partnership – a consortium made of up Homes England, Barratt, and Lloyds Banking Group – to act as master developer for Handforth Garden Village. An 18-month exclusivity agreement has been agreed between the two parties as they explore the details of what a joint venture would look like.

In the meantime, the local authority is plugging away on the project. Councillors agreed on Tuesday to proceed with detailed designs on the A34 corridor that factors into the garden village. Balfour Beatty has been recruited to improve the drainage of this area, remediate the land, and make junction improvements. Work will begin in September 2026.

Ringway Jacobs will assist the contractor, acting as the scheme’s quantity surveyor, project manager, and technical assurer.

Councillors also approved a series of design tweaks to the project: relocating of the proposed school to a larger plot, shortening of the high street, and reconfiguring the green infrastructure elements to create a central greenspace and improve pedestrian and cyclist connectivity.

Cheshire East has budgeted £57.9m for the delivery of Handforth Garden Village, of which £12.2m has already been spent. This money does not include the building of any of the 1,500 proposed homes – as these would be constructed by third parties that would, in theory, purchase land parcels from the council and MADE at market rates.

You can see the approved planning application for Handforth Garden Village by searching reference number 19/0623M on Cheshire East Council’s planning portal. The planning project team included E*Scape Urbanists, IBI (now part of Arcadis), PGA Landscape Architecture, and Frost Planning.