Estate Buildings Residential Development, Huddersfield

The Huddersfield Blueprint is a ten-year vision to create a thriving, modern-day town centre. The vision for Huddersfield is that it will be a busy, family-friendly town centre that stays open for longer with a unique culture, arts and leisure offer and a variety of thriving businesses. The scale of investment and transformation, including high quality, innovative culture, arts and leisure offers will improve the attractiveness of the town centre as a place to live, providing new opportunities for residential development. Estate Buildings is located in the heart of the town centre and forms part of Station Gateway area, one of the six key areas to be regenerated through the Huddersfield Blueprint.

Kirklees Council is presenting an exciting opportunity to convert and acquire Estate Buildings, a listed and historically significant property in Huddersfield Town Centre, for residential use. Most of the property is Grade II* listed with nos. 3-7 Station Street being Grade II listed.

The Council is seeking a developer with proven experience in regenerating historic buildings for residential use, as well as an awareness of the associated risks and complexities.

The Council's vision is for Estate Buildings to be an aspirational place to live within the Town Centre. The homes delivered as part of this contract will be high quality, beautiful, spacious, energy efficient, and safe, and the development will foster a strong sense of place and community. It is expected that any housing units provided meet or surpass Nationally Described Space Standards.

In terms of housing mix and tenure, the Council is open to all proposals from bidders so long as they help to achieve the Council's Blueprint ambition of providing a high-quality housing offer that could potentially attract new residents in the Town Centre, in particular recent graduates of Huddersfield University and young professionals wishing to commute to larger, neighbouring city centres.

The successful developer will be required to submit a funding application, develop a complete design for the conversion of the asset into a residential property (apartments), obtain planning and listed building consents and complete the construction of the works following receipt of the appropriate level of funding for the development.

The contract for this requirement will be structured into three stages, ensuring the Council have control of the asset throughout the delivery phase up until the practical completion of the construction stage. These stages are, Option Agreement, Building Lease and Transfer of the Freehold.

The Council is following the Competitive Flexible Procedure (CFP) under the Procurement Act 2023 to maximise supplier engagement and allow for a more focused procurement process. There will be a two-stage process under this route to market. The Council are initially advertising the procurement opportunity with site and scope information and Procurement Specific Questionnaire (PSQ) including Conditions of Participation. This stage requires interested parties to submit a qualification response form. The Council intends on using this stage to shortlist a maximum of 3 bidders through a compliance, financial and quality evaluation (further information is available in the tender documentation).

Bidders shortlisted will be invited to participate in stage 2, with the Invitation to Submit Final Tenders (ISFT) for their proposal of delivering the requirements on the site. The submission will be evaluated based on the evaluation criteria listed in the procurement documentation identified in the initial Invitation to Tender.