Detailed design of the Western Avenue riverside park is finished and the council approved two changes to its own permission on 13 August. Build due late 2026.
Test Valley Borough Council issued itself two approvals on 13 August covering changes to the planning permission for the new riverside park at Western Avenue, and the paperwork behind one of them carries the clearest public signal yet on where Andover’s largest town centre project has actually got to. The council’s own application says the scheme has passed RIBA Stage 4, the point at which detailed design is complete and a project is drawn up in enough detail to be built. (Officer report, 25/01047/NMA1)
The park itself has had permission since October 2025. What has been missing since is any public update on progress: the project’s own news page at thinkandovertowncentre.co.uk still ends at the September 2025 planning decision. The two amendments approved last week fill part of that gap, because a council does not rewrite construction methods and pre-commencement conditions unless it is preparing to start.
What was approved
Both changes are non-material amendments to permission 25/01047/FULLN, the consent for the park. That application was received on 12 May 2025, resolved by committee on 23 September 2025 and formally issued on 3 October 2025. The amendments were heard at the Northern Area Planning Committee on 6 August at Beech Hurst, and the approval notices were issued on 13 August. (Application record, 25/01047/FULLN)
They went to committee rather than being signed off by officers for a specific reason, set out in the first line of each report: the applicant is the council itself, on its own development, and “the scale and nature of the proposal is not minor”. The case officer on both was Emma Jones.
25/01047/NMA1 rewrites condition 12, which governs how trees on the site are protected during construction. The justification is the interesting part:
“Following the completion of RIBA Stage 4, further information is now known on the method of the cycle lane and kerb construction within the vicinity of trees T023, T048 and T077. The amendments proposed are revised construction methods for work proposed to take place within the RPAs of these trees to allow for the cycle lane and kerb to be built.”
In plain terms, the designers have now worked out exactly how the cycleway and its kerb will be built where they pass close to three trees, and the answer needs digging inside those trees’ root protection areas. The council’s tree officer raised no objection, on the basis that the incursion sits within the recommendations of BS5837:2012 and that the trees can be successfully retained if the submitted method statement is followed. The revised condition now points at an Arboricultural Impact Assessment by Land Use Consultants Ltd, reference 12766B, dated October 2025.
25/01047/NMA2 changes the trigger on condition 15, which requires a Landscape and Environmental Management Plan. As granted, that plan had to be approved before any development took place, including demolition, ground works and vegetation clearance. The wording now reads that the development “shall not be brought into use until” the plan is approved. The council’s argument is that the plan governs long-term management and monitoring once the park is open, so holding up the start of work served no purpose, and that the new wording matches condition 8. (Officer report, 25/01047/NMA2)
Worth noting what did not survive. As first submitted in May, NMA2 also sought changes to conditions 2, 5, 6, 9 and 14. The council withdrew the condition 2 change on 8 June and dropped conditions 5, 6, 9 and 14 on 20 July, leaving a single condition altered out of six originally proposed.
What the park is, and what it costs the road
The permission is worth reading in full, because the headline “riverside park” undersells what happens to the traffic. The approved description is the “closure/stopping up and removal of southbound carriageway of Western Avenue gyratory and associated changes to the highway network, including West Street and Waterloo Court, to allow for the development of a park with areas of hard and soft landscaping, play areas, lighting, pavilion, river viewing platforms and an off-road cycleway”.
That is a permanent removal of one side of the gyratory, not a temporary closure. Nothing has closed yet.
The money behind it: the council allocated £6.5m on 23 February 2023 to redevelop the area around Western Avenue and extend the riverside corridor (Test Valley Borough Council, February 2023), and the wider regeneration programme is part funded by the £18.3m awarded to the council by government for Andover town centre. Construction was expected to begin in late 2026 when permission was granted (Test Valley Borough Council, September 2025).
How the scheme got here
What it means for you
If you drive the gyratory, the southbound carriageway is going, and the approvals of the last fortnight are the sort a council obtains when a start date is in view rather than in principle. There is still no published closure date. Watch our Andover roadworks and travel page and the council’s own notices rather than assuming a date from the “late 2026” target.
If you want to know when the digging starts, the condition 15 change is the one to follow. It removed a pre-commencement requirement, which is a normal step when a start is being scheduled, and it means the long-term management plan is now due before the park opens rather than before ground is broken. Two other pre-commencement conditions the council tried to move, 5 and 6, were withdrawn and still stand.
If you live near the site, the application file lodged in May includes drawings for advanced diversion of electricity, gas and telecoms plant, prepared for SSEN, SGN, BT Openreach and Stark. Utility diversions typically come before the visible construction, so that is the likeliest first sign of work on the ground. The full document list is public on the council’s planning portal.
If you objected, or want to, these were non-material amendments, which carry no public consultation stage and no right of appeal. The decisions are final. Any further change of substance would need a fresh application, which would be advertised in the usual way and would appear on our Andover planning page.
What happens next
The council does not publish a committee’s minutes until they are put to the following meeting, so the formal record of the 6 August votes is due with the papers for the Northern Area Planning Committee on 27 August. The next substantive milestone is the discharge of the remaining pre-commencement conditions, which will appear on the planning portal against reference 25/01047/FULLN before any machinery arrives.
Cllr Phil North, leader of Test Valley Borough Council, said when permission was granted: “This is a hugely exciting moment for Andover. The new riverside park will be a place for everyone, a green, inclusive and inspiring space that reflects the aspirations of our community and the character of our town.”
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