Fawley Waterside, dubbed the Venice of Britain, was designed by King Charles’s favourite architects (Picture: Solent)
A former party boy who wanted to build a ‘net zero smart town’ next to his ancestral estate has stepped back from the project – leaving the future of the £2.3 billion development up in the air.
Aldred Drummond announced plans to develop Fawley Waterside in Hampshire 2017. The new-build town was set to span cover 300 acres within the Solent freeport and New Forest National Park.
Drummond enlisted the royal family’s favourite architects, Ben Pentreath and Leon Krier, to design the town, and recruited his best friend Will Astor – Samantha Cameron’s half-brother – as company director.
Krier was the lead architect on King Charles’s toy town Poundbury in Dorset, and Pentreath oversaw the £1.5 million refurbishment of Anmer Hall, the house on the Sandringham estate which the late Queen gave to William and Kate as a wedding present in 2011.
The town neighbours the Cadland Estate, a 2500-acre estate that has been in the Drummond family for seven generations.
The Cadland Estate has been in the Drummond family since 1772 (Picture: Geograph)
The original plans for Fawley Waterside featured 1,500 homes, an amphitheatre and a marina. A picturesque canal running through the centre earned the town the nickname the ‘Venice of Britain’.
The developers promised the scheme would create 2,000 jobs.
Drummond also has ambitions to make the town an ‘Intelligent Merchant City’ by building with the internet in mind.
Aldred Drummond, left, with Wenty Beaumont and Bryan Ferry (Picture: Richard Young/REX/Shutterstock)
An ‘eco village’ on a former oil power station
The land was home to a disused power station which was used as a filming location in Mission: Impossible — Rogue Nation and Solo: A Star Wars Story.
The power station was decommissioned in 2013 after more than 40 years in operation. The chimney was demolished in 2021, and work has begun to demolish the power station control room.
In 2020, New Forest District Council and the New Forest National Park Authority gave permission for 1,380 homes to be built, subject to a legal agreement that is yet to be signed.
An artists impression of what the ‘Venice of Britain’ could have looked like (Picture: Fawley Waterside/Solent News)
But according to company documents, Drummond resigned from his role as director in September 2023. However, the company that is in charge of developing Fawley Waterside did not publicly confirm this until last month.
An ‘unwelcome’ development
District councilor David Harrison said Drummond was the ‘chief driver behind the whole project’.
‘It was an ambitious project which held the prospect of new homes, including affordable homes for a lot of people, the prospect of lots of jobs – particularly in the maritime sector – and a beautifully designed new town with a lot of environmental aspects.
‘This may be a significant and unwelcome development if it turns out the scheme will ultimately be dropped or drastically scaled back.’
The town might never be completed now (Picture: Fawley Waterside/Solent News)
It’s unclear whether the 1,500 planned houses will now be built.
Nearly 30,000 families were on a waiting list for council housing in Hampshire in 2022, as a lack of affordable housing in the region pushed up prices.
Some locals said they doubted that the project would ever be completed.
Reddit forums are filled with lively criticism of the plan, with many saying they were unimpressed by the location.
‘It’s 10 – 13 miles from the Southampton ring-road, so it’s very car-centric and I doubt it’s well served by buses (I have spent time in this area). It strikes me as a commuter estate,’ one anonymous poster said.
A spokesman for Fawley Waterside said that Drummond ‘remains part of a firmly committed group of investors behind the project.’
The consortium that owns the development said it is reviewing its plans.