A five-year campaign by Frome residents to build the UK’s largest community-led regeneration project has collapsed after Somerset Council voted to sell the prized Saxonvale site to a London-based real estate firm. The decision, announced at a raucous town hall meeting on Wednesday, overrides a bid that had mobilised more than 1,000 locals and raised nearly £1 million in direct investment.
The Liberal Democrat-led authority named Newcore Capital, a Soho-based investment company, as its preferred bidder for the 5-hectare brownfield plot. The move effectively kills the Mayday Saxonvale scheme — a vision for genuinely affordable homes, workspace, a riverside park and a lido — and has left a town renowned for its independent spirit feeling betrayed.
A Town’s Vision Rejected
The atmosphere inside Frome Town Hall was electric. As the council’s executive confirmed Newcore as the successful bidder, the public gallery erupted. Shouts of “shame on you” and “stitch-up” echoed off the walls. Several people who had dedicated years to the Mayday bid were openly weeping.
Outside, protesters had gathered hours earlier, placards in hand. They represented a cross-section of Frome: nurses, teachers, retirees, young families. All had bought shares in the Mayday Saxonvale Community Benefit Society, some investing modest sums, others significant portions of their savings. They weren’t spectators; they were stakeholders.
Sara Butler, a Frome town councillor, did not mince her words. “It’s devastating news,” she said. “So many people have worked so hard on trying to ensure this site is developed with the best interests of Frome. It’s been a town-wide mission and this is a slap in the face.”
The council maintains the sale is unconditional. It says it hopes Newcore will engage with the community, but the legal framework offers no guarantee. For many, that assurance rings hollow.
The Bid That Captured a Community
Mayday Saxonvale was never a typical NIMBY campaign. It was a proactive, sophisticated proposal backed by serious financial muscle. Beyond the £1 million raised from residents, the project had secured £1.2 million from Resonance, a social impact fund — the largest single investment in that fund’s history. Other investors were waiting in the wings.
Paul Oster, an executive director of the community benefit society, described the rejection as a historic missed opportunity. “The chance to create the UK’s largest community-led regeneration project has been lost,” he said.
Jon Rolls, head of developing communities at Resonance, warned of a broader danger. “The people of Frome haven’t simply expressed an opinion,” he said. “They organised behind this vision and invested their own money. Without local ownership, there is a real danger that Saxonvale will become another regeneration scheme done to a community, rather than by and with that community.”
The Mayday plan was explicit: housing that locals could actually afford, workspace for the town’s creative and artisan economy, and public realm that put people before cars. It was a blueprint born of the town itself.
Questions Over Process and Transparency
Fiona Barrows, leader of Frome Town Council, criticised the opacity of the process. “Saxonvale is simply too important to Frome to be treated as an ordinary land disposal,” she said. Her authority will now attempt to work with the new owners, but she starts from a position of deep scepticism.
Suspicions of a predetermined outcome were fuelled by the speed of the aftermath. Within two minutes of the council announcing Newcore’s name, a full press release landed in journalists’ inboxes. Fifteen minutes later, Newcore issued its own polished statement. To many in the room, it had the choreography of a deal long since sealed.
The council argues it could not verify Mayday’s total funding capacity. Yet the community bid had demonstrated more tangible financial commitment — actual cash from actual residents — than is typical for outline planning stages. The agreed land price is understood to be around £3 million.
What Comes Next for Saxonvale
Newcore’s track record offers a glimpse of what might follow. Its portfolio includes an 8-acre site in east London slated for 1,047 homes alongside a supermarket and health centre, and a Cambridge scheme mixing a care home with retirement apartments. In its statement, the company pledged to work “collaboratively” with Frome, citing “intergenerational accommodation”, artist space, open space and car parking as likely elements.
Noticeably absent from that list: a lido. Noticeably vague: the proportion of genuinely affordable housing.
For a town that has built its reputation on doing things differently — from its independent shops to its pioneering flat-pack democracy — the decision feels like a repudiation. Frome showed up. It organised. It paid. And it was told, in effect, that capital from Soho knows better than capital from the high street.
Why it Matters
Saxonvale was a test case for whether community ownership can compete with institutional capital in Britain’s broken land market. The answer, delivered in a Somerset town hall on a Wednesday evening, is a resounding no — not when the public sector acts as gatekeeper. If a town as organised, engaged and financially committed as Frome cannot wrest control of its own brownfield heart, the promise of “levelling up” and community power rings hollow. The precedent is chilling: the next community that dares to imagine a different future for its neighbourhood will know, before they even begin, that the dice are loaded.
