Prologis will start building Palletways' 59,201 sq m Fradley headquarters in November after the council signed off three construction conditions on 1 October.
Building work on Palletways’ new national headquarters at Fradley is expected to start in November. The pallet network said so in a statement on 7 October, after Lichfield District Council approved the last of the pre-start details it needed.
The council’s planning register shows what unlocked the start date. On 1 October it approved the surface water management plan, the construction environmental management plan and the bird-breeding-season method statement required by conditions 13, 15 and 23 of the permission. Those were the conditions that had to be cleared before anything could happen on site.
The permission itself is not new. Councillors on the Planning Committee approved the scheme on 29 June, the legal agreement was signed on 30 July and the decision notice was issued on 31 July under reference 26/00036/FULM.
What is being built
The applicant is Prologis UK, which owns the neighbouring Prologis Park Fradley and is building the warehouse for Palletways to occupy. The committee report sets out the scale:
- a 22.03 hectare site of farmland south of Prologis Park, about 3km north-east of the city centre, between the A38 and the HS2 corridor
- one warehouse of 59,201 sq m gross internal floorspace (about 637,000 sq ft), roughly 329m long, 171m wide and 21.8m to the ridge
- 493 car parking spaces, 397 HGV parking spaces and 120 cycle spaces
- a gatehouse, two hub offices in the service yard and cross-dock loading
- more than 600 new trees, a realigned stretch of Mare Brook and a walking and cycling route linking Fradley and Streethay
- rooftop solar panels, EV charging and a target of EPC A+ and BREEAM Outstanding
The farmhouse and outbuildings known as Rough Stockings, in the south-western corner of the site, will be demolished. Access is from Nanscawen Road, the private estate road inside Prologis Park. The nearest homes are about 600 metres away.
Why the council said yes
Palletways has been at Fradley since 1994, and the new building would bring its existing operations on the estate under one roof. The planning statement, as summarised in the committee report, put the case as:
- a capital investment of more than £100m in the district
- 250 existing jobs secured, with 62% of staff living within 15 miles
- enough HGV parking on site to end lorries parking on the roads around Fradley
Officers gave that “substantial” weight. The report also says the site is not allocated for employment use and counts as countryside in planning terms, but that it adjoins the district’s main strategic employment area and no alternative site of the size was available.
Not every consultee was happy. The council’s own landscape consultant kept an objection to the building’s “scale and visual prominence”: the district Design Code says employment buildings should generally stay under 15 metres, and this one is 21.8 metres. The council’s tree officer lodged a formal objection to the loss of four trees (T20, G21, T36 and T37) that count as irreplaceable habitat under the biodiversity net gain rules. One English oak, T15, is the only tree on the site that meets the national definition of a veteran tree, and it is being kept.
The ecology team recorded that the scheme loses 14.53% of its habitat units on site, while gaining 87.36% in hedgerow units and 42.40% in watercourse units. The mandatory 10% net gain is secured by condition, on site or off it, and a separate biodiversity obligation agreement was added to the register on 24 September.
No member of the public wrote in. Fradley Parish Council, Streethay Parish Council and the ward councillors sent no comments.
Lorries, the A38 and Hilliards Cross
Staffordshire County Council’s highways team called Fradley Park “a sensitive traffic area” because of the A38 Hilliards Cross junction at peak times. The applicant’s collision study found 38 recorded personal injury collisions across the study area in seven years, 25 of them on the A38, including two fatal crashes, the most recent in 2018.
The county did not object. Its reasoning was that most of the site’s vehicle movements happen outside the peaks, and that the traffic model had already been accepted for a recent Fradley application. It asked for, and got, a travel plan from first occupation and construction traffic routing in the management plan.
The legal agreement commits the developer to:
- £62,000 to upgrade the two bus stops on Wood End Lane with shelters, real-time information and raised kerbs
- £6,000 for travel plan monitoring
- £8,703.66 for biodiversity monitoring
The committee added one more condition on the night. Before the building is occupied, Prologis must sign an agreement with National Highways for a wooden footbridge over the watercourse and a shared footway and cycleway link to the A38 footpath.
Robert Gittins and Ryan Gordon spoke for the applicant at the meeting. The minutes record a single word for the outcome: “Approved.”
What the company says
Palletways’ statement describes the council as having granted “unconditional planning permission”. The decision notice in fact attaches 30 conditions and a legal agreement, and three of those conditions are the ones approved on 1 October. What the company means is that the permission is now clear to be implemented.
Rob Gittins said the milestone “represents a significant step in our long term investment in the UK and in particular Lichfield for the last 32 years”. Caroline Musker, head of planning at Prologis UK, thanked the council for its “constructive engagement”. Neither statement gives a completion date. The permission lapses if work has not begun by 31 July 2029.
What it means for you
- Fradley and Streethay residents: construction traffic will run under an approved routing plan from November. Two bus stops on Wood End Lane are due shelters and real-time displays, paid for by the developer.
- Drivers: the council and county accept more HGV movements through Hilliards Cross, on the basis that most happen off-peak. Our roadworks and travel page tracks live works on the A38.
- Jobs: the 250 roles are existing Palletways jobs being kept in the district, not new ones. The company talks of “opportunities for further growth” without a number.
- Walkers and cyclists: a new route through the site between Fradley and Streethay, plus a footbridge to the A38 path, must be in place before the building opens.
A second large warehouse proposal on the same road is still open. Outline application 26/01025/OUTM would demolish Lichfield Auction Centre on Wood End Lane for storage and distribution buildings. It is pending and open for comment. See our planning applications page for how to respond.
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