Leicester City Football Club, Park Hill Training Ground
In 2017 award-winning architects, KSS Group, brought EDP on board to help the unexpected 2016 Premier League Champions, Leicester City Football Club, develop a world-class elite sports training facility. Unrivalled in terms of complexity and design aspiration, this incredible project allowed the team at EDP to demonstrate the strength of their design flair and technical knowhow.
We have been involved in the project from the site selection stage to practical completion and beyond. As a result, we’ve provided services across a wide range of planning and design disciplines, including – Landscape and Visual Impact Assessment, Cultural Heritage, Ecology and Arboriculture.
Our Challenge
Just like the owner’s ambition to keep Leicester City FC at the very highest level, our programme was incredibly ambitious. It started with a site feasibility at the end of 2017, achieved detailed planning consent in Autumn 2018 and ultimately practical completion at the end of 2020, at the height of the COVID pandemic.
In addition to the standard planning requirements, we also needed to address European Protected Species matters and the translocation of hundreds of mature trees.
Our Solution
As part of the world class training centre, the proposals included 12-full sized pitches, a show pitch and stand, a full-sized indoor pitch which flows into the landscape and a ‘best in the league’ centrepiece training building.
The landscape not only needed to complement and provide legible and attractive links between all the beautiful architecture, but also to ensure the club were able to achieve a net gain in biodiversity.
Realising our vision created a sophisticated interface between the new training complex and the wider landscape. Today it sensitively integrates the complex, so that it sits in harmony within the local landscape, while providing an exceptional quality of landscape treatment in and around the site.
To reflect the caring, family ethos associated with Leicester City Football Club we also positively promoted biodiversity with the creation and enhancement of existing habitats. So, not only have we been able to retain and enhance part of the site as a 9-hole golf course but we are also supporting the long-term enhancement of the great crested newt population on site.
Our Extraordinary
With coverage across all ‘green’ disciplines, our positive and proactive approach ensured we could actively engage, collaborate and troubleshoot between the club, consultees, statutory authorities, contractors and their supply chains. And we achieved all this against the backdrop of the worldwide COVID pandemic.
Testament to our success was the receipt of the Project Of The Year Award accredited in 2021 at the Stadium Business Summit. The judges described our project as:
“A world-class facility, enabling Leicester City to truly establish themselves as a player in the top of the Premier League”.
"I have enjoyed working on the Leicester City Football Club project and it has been interesting to see the Site evolve through the planning process.
I first went to site to help undertake the bat and great crested newt surveys whilst it was still a golf course. I have since been involved with the large-scale newt translocation prior to construction, regular site checks during construction and the post development monitoring.
I have been able to watch the site change from a golf course to a building site and onto the outstanding facility that now exists. It has been interesting to see how we can influence the design of large-scale projects like this, as it was our ecology team that specified the wildlife mitigation which included a ring of ponds which surround the training ground.
It has been a great experience, which has provided me with opportunities, as I have gone from assisting on great crested newt surveys at the start of the project to organising and leading the post-development monitoring surveys. I now use the knowledge I have gained from this project to help me create mitigation strategies for other projects I now work on."
I first went to site to help undertake the bat and great crested newt surveys whilst it was still a golf course. I have since been involved with the large-scale newt translocation prior to construction, regular site checks during construction and the post development monitoring.
I have been able to watch the site change from a golf course to a building site and onto the outstanding facility that now exists. It has been interesting to see how we can influence the design of large-scale projects like this, as it was our ecology team that specified the wildlife mitigation which included a ring of ponds which surround the training ground.
It has been a great experience, which has provided me with opportunities, as I have gone from assisting on great crested newt surveys at the start of the project to organising and leading the post-development monitoring surveys. I now use the knowledge I have gained from this project to help me create mitigation strategies for other projects I now work on."
Our core project team
Senior Ecologist
Associate
Associate
Senior Ecologist
Senior Masterplanner
Associate Director
Director