[2025] UKUT 312 (LC)

The four neighbouring sites which will accommodate the new Curzon Street Station are located at the eastern edge of Birmingham city centre in the area known as the Eastside Quarter. Each is a substantial development site in its own right. At earlier stages of the proceedings the sites have been identified as sites 1, 2, 3 and 4, moving from west to east. We will retain that referencing for sites 2, 3 and 4 but in this decision we will refer to site 1, City Park Gate, as “the Appeal Site”.

The Appeal Site is the most westerly of the four sites, closest to the city centre and separated from it only by Moor Street Queensway, part of the city’s A47 inner ring road. It is a large site (although not the largest of the four) comprising 1.52 ha of previously developed land bounded by Moor Street Queensway to the west, Moor Street Station and the culverted Rugby railway line to the south, Park Street to the east and the Clayton Hotel fronted by a pedestrian boulevard to the north.

Until the mid-twentieth century the Appeal Site was an area of small factories and workshops, interspersed with modest terraced housing. It was laid out in a grid pattern with Freeman Street and Seymour Street running east-west through the site, connecting Moor Street Queensway to Park Street running north-south and flanking the site. The Appeal Site was thus divided into three blocks, with a larger rectangular block in the centre and smaller (approximately) triangular blocks at the northern and southern ends.

The post war decline of the area was accelerated by the completion in 1965 of the city’s “concrete collar”, the inner ring road which separated Eastside decisively from the city centre core and which included an elevated roundabout at Masshouse Circus, adjoining the northwest corner of the Appeal Site. Masshouse Circus was demolished in 2002 and by 2007 the Appeal Site had also been cleared in anticipation of development which would reconnect it to the core and expand the city centre eastwards.

The sole active use of the Appeal Site at the valuation date was to accommodate large surface level car parks with only a single building, the derelict and fire damaged Grade II listed Fox and Grapes, occupying the corner of Park Street and Freeman Street. This building was demolished in 2018 under powers conferred by the 2017 Act.

Until its interest was compulsorily acquired, Quintain owned a long lease of the Appeal Site, held from the Council as freeholder.

To the north of the Appeal Site is the Clayton Hotel. By the valuation date two high rise residential buildings had been constructed beyond the hotel, known as Masshouse and The Hive, each of 16 storeys. To the west of Masshouse, high rise and medium rise residential development of 27, 16 and 9 storeys was under construction at Exchange Square (within the city core area).

The core city centre retail area is within 50 metres of the Appeal Site to the west, on the opposite side of Moor Street Queensway, and the Bullring shopping centre is approximately 150 metres to the south, separated from the Appeal Site by the railway line, Moor Street Station, and Moor Street itself.

To the east of the Appeal Site, on the opposite side of Park Street, was Park Street Gardens, a former burial ground with mature landscaping, which is part of site 2. The Gardens adjoined Eastside City Park, a long, narrow urban park opened in 2012 which borders sites 2 and 3. By the valuation date sites 2, 3 and 4 had all been cleared, ready for development, with only two buildings remaining: the principal building of the original Curzon Street railway station, which is Grade I listed and dates from 1838, and the Grade II listed Woodman public house. The wider heritage landscape includes the Digbeth, Deritend and Bordesley and Warwick Bar conservation areas on the southern side of the railways.

Curzon Street itself, with the HS2 terminus being developed to the south, is bounded to the north by new development (some of it postdating the valuation date). University buildings abut the City Park, alongside other modern buildings contributing to the character of the area as one of the City’s education hubs. Millennium Point houses a science museum, an exhibition and conference centre and other cultural and educational institutions. Further east, at the far end of Curzon Street, Eastside Locks is a substantial mixed-use development including residential, office and education uses.