Land off Fordham Road, Newmarket

The total site extends to approximately 1.51 hectares (3.74 acres) and formed part of Balaton Lodge, prior to a residential consent being granted for much of the holding now called Balaton Place.

The paddock land, complete with a stable building with direct access onto Fordham Road (A142), is surrounded by residential built form. Balaton Lodge dates to the 1890s and once was a famous racehorse training establishment. The site was named after Lake Balaton, the largest lake in Europe. In 1999 the site was operated by the Animal Health Trust as the Equine Research Station.

It was agreed that pursuing a planning application would be complex and take a great deal of cost and time for it to be successful and so we advised our client that a sale was the right way forward. The benefit was that a capital receipt would be realised now, and a further receipt could be realised in time via overage.

The property attracted a wide range of buyers who were interesting to meet and unusually, the result was that the land was purchased by a company set up by the surrounding residents to protect the land from future development or change of use.