A £35 million project to regenerate the town centre of Wolverton, a handsome Victorian railway town that is now a popular neighbourhood in Milton Keynes.

TOWN is delivering Love Wolverton, a 115-home town-centre regeneration scheme, in partnership with Milton Keynes Council. The scheme meets long-held community ambitions for the demolition of the Agora Centre, a failed 1970s leisure and shopping centre built in the 1970s by Milton Keynes Development Corporation, and reinstates the lost Victorian street pattern, reconnecting and revitalising Wolverton’s town centre.

Arranged in six urban blocks of three to four storeys, the scheme incorporates shops and restaurants on key corners, reinforcing Wolverton’s thriving independent high street. Redbrick architecture echoes the language of the surrounding conservation area, and high-quality public realm including a new pocket park makes this a place to welcome everyone living in and visiting Wolverton.

The project secured planning permission in 2021 and will start on site in 2023.

Homes for social and environmental wellbeing.

Homes will include two- to four-bedroom houses and one- to three-bedroom apartments. Homes are an average of 7% larger than national space standards, with good levels of natural daylighting, with private terraces and balconies as well as access to shared gardens.

High fabric standards and airtightness, supported by mechanical ventilation and heat recovery systems, make for low energy demand. An on-site ‘microgrid’ will generate power through roof-mounted photovoltaics, store it in a neighbourhood battery and supply homed and businesses within the development. Together with air source heat pumps, this means that two-thirds of energy use will be met from on-site renewables, meaning an 80% reduction in operational CO2 emissions against Building Regulations Part L.

A low-car neighbourhood.

On a highly accessible town-centre site, the scheme adopts restrained levels of residential parking, with an overall ratio of 0.7 parking spaces per dwelling. Existing travel alternatives – frequent bus services to Central Milton Keynes adjacent to the site and Wolverton railway station a short walk away – will be supplemented with a new sustainable mobility hub including two on-site cycle-hire schemes and a four-car electric car club.

A place for all.

New car-free ‘little streets’ and a new pocket park – designed around retained London Plane trees – will provide public spaces for all residents and visitors to Wolverton to use. Integrated into the Love Wolverton scheme, the Still Green co-housing community for people aged 50 and over will provide a social anchor within the regeneration. Alongside this a community space with a focus on younger people will be provided, and we are working with Future Wolverton to enable this space to be used as a co-working space that facilitates mentoring. These elements help the development integrate into social and cultural setting of the town centre, ensuring its long-term success.

Realising the community’s vision.

We’re responding to the ambition of the Wolverton Neighbourhood Plan to make Wolverton town centre a “vibrant, attractive and distinctive neighbourhood”. We have worked closely with the community through a regular working group with representatives of local resident, business and faith communities, as well as hosting design workshops with stakeholders from across Milton Keynes, Minecraft-based design workshops with local schoolchildren, and a programme of events to commemorate and celebrate the passing of the Agora. We continue to work with these groups as the project moves into the delivery phase.