On the edge of Ilkeston, where the vast footprint of the former Stanton Ironworks once defined both the skyline and the local economy, a different kind of transformation is underway. The site, now branded New Stanton Park, is being reshaped into a major industrial and logistics hub, with new buildings rising across land that has stood largely dormant for years. For some, the redevelopment represents long-awaited regeneration. For others, it raises a more immediate and practical question: what will it mean for the roads?
Traffic has moved to the centre of the debate in recent weeks following approval of a new facility for Fassa Bortolo. The application prompted discussion not only because of the height of its proposed tower, but because it anticipates around 260 HGV movements per day linked to a facility expected to create 55 jobs. For many residents, that figure alone felt substantial.
Yet councillors and planning officers have repeatedly made the same point: the overall traffic impact of the wider site was assessed and approved in 2022.
That statement is technically correct. But the scale of what was approved deserves careful reading.
What the 2022 Plans Actually Allow
When Erewash Borough Council granted hybrid planning permission for the 200-acre brownfield site in 2022, it approved up to 261,000 square metres of industrial and logistics floorspace – a scale typically associated with manufacturing plants, distribution centres and warehousing operations. Alongside the buildings, a detailed Transport Assessment modelled the traffic the completed development could generate once fully occupied.
The figures set out in that assessment are explicit. At full build-out, the approved scheme allows for 4,671 total vehicle movements per day, of which 1,810 are heavy goods vehicle movements. These are counted as “two-way” movements, meaning every vehicle entering and every vehicle leaving the site is recorded separately. In practice, that represents 2,350 vehicles entering daily and 2,321 leaving, including 887 HGVs arriving and 923 departing.
Put simply, once operational, the modelling anticipates close to 1,800 lorry movements per day associated with the development.
While the 2022 approval also included provision for an intermodal rail facility, the Transport Assessment modelling factored that into its calculations. The documents assume up to five trains per day serving the western terminal, each carrying around 45 containers. Rail reduces some long-distance freight within the model, but even with those assumptions in place, the development still carries approximately 1,810 HGV movements per day once fully occupied. The approved traffic totals already reflect rail operating alongside road freight.
For residents focusing on the 260 daily HGV movements associated with the Fassa Bortolo facility, the broader context is sobering. The wider site permission anticipates nearly seven times that number across all occupiers combined.
The Peak Hour Picture
Daily totals, however, can disguise intensity.
The same modelling forecasts that during the busiest evening hour, 528 vehicle movements could occur across the site’s access points, including 109 HGV movements. That is more than 500 vehicles in a single hour – roughly one vehicle every seven seconds – with close to two heavy goods vehicles per minute during peak time.
These projections were not speculative. They formed part of the transport modelling accepted by Derbyshire County Council Highways when concluding that, with junction improvements and mitigation works, the development would not meet the national planning threshold of being “severe”.
At the time the permission was granted, there were no confirmed occupiers and no visible procession of freight traffic. The decision was framed around regeneration and economic opportunity, and whether development at this scale could technically be accommodated by the existing road network. The modelling suggested it could.
Beyond the Spreadsheet
Transport assessments measure junction capacity, queue length and delay times in order to determine whether roads can function within technical limits. What they do not attempt to capture is perception – how a road feels when freight traffic becomes routine, or how more than 100 HGV movements in a peak hour interact with school runs, commuter congestion and residential streets.
Four thousand six hundred vehicle movements per day reads like a statistic. One thousand eight hundred lorry movements per day changes the character of a place.
As individual occupiers now move forward, each is assessed against the transport envelope agreed in 2022. If predicted vehicle movements sit within those modelled assumptions, planning officers can argue – correctly in procedural terms – that no fundamentally new impact is being introduced. The ceiling was set four years ago.
The Question Now
The debate unfolding in Ilkeston is not about whether these figures exist. They do, and they were approved.
The question is whether the scale of what was signed off – measured in vehicles per day and lorries per minute – was widely understood at the time.
Because the 2022 decision did more than approve industrial floorspace. It defined, in numerical terms, the level of traffic the surrounding roads would be expected to absorb once the site became fully operational.
As New Stanton Park fills, that transport future is no longer theoretical. It is emerging in real time.
2 Comments
It might be acceptable by borough and county councils but bearing in mind how it will clog access to and from Kirk Hallam and nearby villages doesn’t seem to matter. They haven’t also taken into account that Kirk Hallam is home to two of Ilkeston’s only 3 secondary schools which are accessed twice daily by both cars and also pedestrianised kids who will be walking through or around this traffic from not just Kirk Hallam but from Ilkeston and as far away as Cotmanhay and they haven’t even filtered in a child safe crossing along the main pedestrian walkway to Kirk Hallam somewhere near the vets to accommodate safety during these peak hours and beyond – and that’s before we consider how much more pollution from both fuel emissions or open cargo aggregate and other dust and emissions is in the atmosphere.
The Ilkeston news does a very good job explaining things for local folk and makes up for loss of advertiser – thank you. i grew up off station st and had family at ironworks. were good times for Ilson. can remember the “smog”! also the site was very busy then with the roads and think people have forgotten that. ever since I retired I have seen so many young without jobs so please can we find a way to make this work. we seem to find ways of not building anything now and that is not a future for the young ones. i hope the council can work to get this built. has always been an industry site so please remember. i have seen a lot of change but not so much progress for local business. i read a local businessman is behind this so well done.