MEASURES intended to speed up the delivery of a business park near the M5 will remain in place despite the lack of physical progress recently.

Taunton Deane Borough Council created a local development order (LDO) in March 2018 for the Nexus 25 site, near junction 25 of the M5 near Taunton.

The site for the park was unlocked by Somerset County Council as part of a £19.2m upgrade of junction 25, with a new roundabout being delivered near the Gateway park and ride site.

Since this upgrade was completed in early-2021, not a single brick has been laid at the Nexus 25 site, while other employment zones in the local area – such as Westpark 26 in Wellington – have continued to expand at a steady rate.

Somerset Council has now confirmed the LDO will remain in place for at least another five years to ensure the site can be delivered – though it has not given any clarity on when work might start.

LDOs lay out detailed conditions for how each part of a major development site can be used, meaning a developer can deliver individual elements relatively quickly provided they meet these conditions.

This is considered a less cumbersome approach than conventional planning permissions, where the developer would have to submit a new application for every individual parcel of land within a given site.

A similar order was put in place for the Gravity enterprise zone in late-2021, allowing the newly-announced occupier Agratas to deliver various elements of its new £4bn gigagactory at a relatively rapid rate.