The creation of the Lindhurst Development in Mansfield is expected to provide an annual boost to the town’s economy of about £100 million.
Officials in the town have praised the prospects of the scheme, suggesting it will be “self-contained” and not impact existing services.
As many as 5,000 new residents could be welcomed to the town once the overall development is complete, with around 500 homes already on-site in the first phase of construction.
The groundwork was set in motion in June for the second phase of housing after work on a new spine road serving the properties got underway.
This will accommodate the next 500 homes, as well as business space, a new primary school and a potential new doctor’s surgery in the future.
Once complete, the £150 million development is expected to bring around 4,000 jobs to the town.
This is according to Richard Bowden, project representative for the development, who broke down how the overall scheme help in “pumping” money into Mansfield.
“The estimates that we’ve done when we went for planning permission were that there could be up to 4,000 new jobs created,” he said.
“That’s involving the shops, the employment land, the school and so on, as well as hundreds of construction jobs all the way through.
“The other thing is that you’ve got a community of maybe 5,000 new residents who will be pumping about £100 million a year into the Mansfield economy.”
Outline planning permission was first granted for the scheme in 2013, though it has taken several years for the first plots of houses to be built on-site.
Mr Bowden has previously warned that it will likely be “into the 2030s” before the last house is built, with the third phase of development due to be lodged to Mansfield District Council later this year.
This will bring the final 700 properties to the south of Sherwood Way, though developers are yet to set out to planners how this will look.
And Mr Bowden says achieving planning permission for each phase has been one of the key roadblocks for developers in pressing onwards.
“The major difficulty with a development of this size is achieving planning permission,” he said.
“You have to do a million different things to satisfy the planners and show that your site is suitable from an ecological perspective, that there are no archaeological remains on there, that the ground is stable and so on.
“Once you’ve got your planning, it’s really a question of deciding how you’re going to put in the infrastructure if you’re going to do it yourself or bring someone else in, and then start marketing the land and hoping someone wants to buy it.
“In our case, we have people bidding for it before we put it on the market which is very promising.”
However, despite the roadblocks, officials in Mansfield are optimistic about how the scheme will improve the town.
Councillor Ben Bradley, leader of Nottinghamshire County Council, is also the town’s Conservative MP.
He said: “Because of the size and the scale, what [the development] does is bring with it a significant opportunity to leverage the investment of developers through the planning process.
“Instead of latching little bits onto the edge of communities, it creates something self-contained, an attractive, new community to the south of the town that will have its own services.
“It will have its own primary school, health services and a small town square with shops, it’s not just tacking houses onto the end of a community.
“I see it as a major investment into our town and it’s really positive that Mansfield is somewhere people want to come and live, because of where we sit in north Nottinghamshire and Sherwood Forest and with our good transport links.”
A planning application was lodged last month to build the second phase of almost 500 houses on-site.
It will include 170 affordable properties, with the proposals due to be reviewed by planners at Mansfield District Council later this year.
