A site near Reading town centre that's been empty for around 15 years and was earmarked for more than 600 homes will remain dormant for the foreseeable future.
The Royal Mail depot on Caversham Road opened in 1989. Postal operations moved in 2009 and Network Rail used the site as a construction hub for the £895 million Reading Station redevelopment, completed in 2014. It has been vacant since.
Hermes Property Unit Trust had proposed demolishing the depot to build Reading Metropolitan: 620 homes with offices, shops and community space, including a 24‑storey tower and seven‑ to eight‑storey buildings facing Caversham Road.
The scheme was approved after a March 2022 planning meeting and a section 106 agreement in April 2023, but planning permission has lapsed through inactivity, the council's principal planning officer Richard Eatough confirmed. Developers usually have three years to start work and there have been no visible changes, so the consent expired.
It is understood Reading Metropolitan has effectively been cancelled because it is economically unviable.
During the meeting where the project was approved, councillor Tony Page expressed fears that the site was "ripe for onward sale."
Speaking on behalf of Hermes, planning agent Barry Kitcherside said: "This is not somebody trading in a planning consent, this is somebody that wants to deliver the development, and that's very, very important, my client is not of that ilk on this particular land holding.
"My client is engaging with a development partner. We want to do this scheme my client has got the money to do it, he's got third parties, we're ready to rock up and work on the development.
"This is not going to be passed under the table; that's not the desire here. To achieve financial viability, we have got to deliver the right product."
You can view the lapsed application by typing reference PL/18/2252 into the council's planning portal.
The Hermes property trust was merged with Legal & General managed property fund in August last year.
James Aldridge, Local Democracy Reporter
