Neighbours have said a Nottinghamshire village will 'become a town' if plans for thousands of homes to built at a barracks move forward. Chetwynd Barracks, on the edge of Toton and Chilwell, is earmarked for up to 4,500 new homes upon its closure, as well as employment space and a major transport hub which was originally planned to serve an HS2 station.
The huge project was said to have been 'complicated' at the end of 2021, with the review of the barracks' closure being pushed from 2024 to 2026 and Toton missing out on its long-rumoured HS2 hub. But recently a £40m bid has been launched for funding from the Government’s Levelling Up fund, which would be used to build a link road to the east of Bardills Island to connect the A52 with Toton Lane and service the vast housing project.
Residents living on Calverton Close in Toton, next to one end of the large barracks complex, said they expected a massive change in the area if the full plans were enacted. Dave Crosby, 57, who works as a car valet and lives on Calverton Close, said Toton would be turned into a town by the new housing. "It will be chaos and the level of change will be crazy. I think it will be too many people for a small area at the moment, Toton used to be a village but it will be a town," Mr Crosby said.
