EXPANSION plans for Jaguar Land Rover’s Gaydon headquarters have been given the go-ahead – creating 1,800 new jobs
The detailed proposals were contained within four separate applications to Stratford District Council.
They included plans to knock down and re-build the current noise, vibration and harshness testing centre and increase its capacity.
Bosses were also looking to construct a new ‘Triangle Building’, which would house offices, improved design studios, a bigger restaurant, communal areas and other facilities.
Plans to create a new entrance to the neighbouring British Motor Museum had been put forward along with proposals for a visitor entrance reception building at Jaguar Land Rover.
The world-famous car manufacturer was also hoping to increase its parking capacity as well as building new vehicle and pedestrian bridges.
In total, the proposals would see the floor space at the Gaydon Test Centre increase from its current 110,000 square metre capacity to 168,000 square metres — a 51 per cent expansion.
And having debated each application individually, members of the authority’s planning committee opted to follow officers’ recommendations – granting all four applications unanimously at a meeting this week.
However the decision could be called-in by the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government.
Around 6,000 staff are already employed by JLR in Gaydon but the new proposals are expected to create somewhere in the region of 1,800 additional jobs.
The latest decision comes just weeks after the green light was given for £500million plans expand the company’s global HQ at Whitley in Coventry.
The 60-acre site south of the A45 near Baginton – known as Whitley South – falls on the boundary of Warwick District Council and Coventry City Council.
Planning chiefs from both councils officially gave the scheme the go-ahead in April but as the development was on green belt land, the plans had to be further scrutinised by Government officials, who recently ruled they would not need to be subject to a planning inquiry.
Building work can now start on an expanded research development centre, which will be linked to the existing Whitley offices by a bridge over the main road.
It is not yet known when the expansion of the JLR site at Gaydon will begin.
