Aerial shots show progress of Cannock's mammoth new designer village

Work to clear the site to make way for the £160 million McArthurGlen Designer Outlet in Cannock, started last month.

Formerly known as Mill Green, workers moved onto the development to begin site preparation and earth works in July.

Due to be completed in 2020, the scheme will 1,000 jobs for the local area – with Phase I set to be home to 80 sought-after premium and luxury brands offering year-round savings of up to 60 per cent, as well as restaurants and cafes, a children’s play area, bike parking for cyclists and 1,400 car parking spaces.

After diggers arrived on the site off the A460, keen photographer Martyn Jones, from Hednesford, visited the area to fly his drone over development.

From high in the skies of Cannock, he has captured the store of the work being undertaken and uploaded the photographs online.

Mr Jones, who usually captures disused airfields and military sites, says he will be returning to the development each month to record the progress of the designer outlet from above.

"I want to photograph a visual record of how the landscape has changed – capturing the transformation from a building site to a retail park.

"As it's still early days on the construction work on the site, I will be taking pictures of the retail park on a monthly basis going forward.

"I have being taking pictures with the drone for three years now. I normally photograph disused airfields or military sites. The airfields can be quite fascinating due to parch marking where its possible to see lost features like the outline of buildings or roads."

Cannock Chase District Council granted planning approval for a designer outlet at Mill Green in September 2016 following extensive consultations with the local community.

Following this, in December 2017, McArthurGlen announced a joint venture with Aviva Investors, The Richardson Family and U+I to develop McArthurGlen Designer Outlet Cannock, which will span 285,000 sq ft of retail space across two phases.

The development will become the Group’s 26th centre, and their seventh in the UK.

The McArthurGlen Designer Outlet will also deliver an additional £1.5 million investment in various projects that will bring significant benefits to the local community.

This investment programme will include the enhancement and ongoing maintenance of the Mill Green Nature Park, improvements to Cannock Town Centre and the railway station, and support for developing skills and employment prospects for local people.

Gary Bond, joint managing director of development at McArthurGlen, said: “We are thrilled to start construction on this milestone development for Cannock.

"The new centre will generate significant employment for the local area and create a new retail destination for the region, serving 11 million local residents.

"McArthurGlen Designer Outlet Cannock will be built to the highest standards of architectural design and sustainability, reflecting and respecting the surrounding natural landscape.”

The start of construction on McArthurGlen Designer Outlet Cannock comes at a time of rapid growth for the company, which opened Europe’s first designer outlet in the UK in 1995 and now operates 24 centres in nine countries. McArthurGlen will enter its 10th market when it opens the first designer outlet in the south of Spain in 2019.

It is currently expanding two of its existing centres in the UK - Cheshire Oaks near Manchester, which is the country’s largest designer outlet, and Ashford near London. Earlier this year, the company announced that it will be adding a second phase to its award-winning centre at Vancouver Airport in Canada.

Derbyshire based construction company Bowmer & Kirkland has been appointed to deliver the scheme.