Demolition starts on Bradford's Oastler site ahead of first 97 City Village homes

Demolition of the former Oastler Shopping Centre in Bradford has started, clearing the site for the first 97 homes in the City Village regeneration scheme being delivered by Bradford Council and ECF, Muse announced on 16 October.

Wakefield-based Metropolitan Demolition will spend about eight months removing the shopping centre along with 22-24 Rawson Road, the former home of Bradford Brewery, and the Bazaar building. Construction of 97 two and three-bedroom townhouses is expected to start in summer 2027, according to Muse.

ECF is a partnership between Homes England's National Housing Bank, L&G and Muse. Representatives of the West Yorkshire Combined Authority (WYCA), Homes England and housing provider Incommunities joined the delivery partners on site this week to mark the start of work.

Simon Dew, Managing Director for Yorkshire and the North East at Muse, said: "A demolition programme of this scale in an urban centre is a significant undertaking, but every measure is being put in place to minimise the impact – including maintaining access to local businesses."

Phase one homes

The phase one homes will be a mix of shared ownership, affordable rent and social rent, and will be owned and managed by Bradford-based Incommunities, Muse said.

Detailed planning consent for phase one, announced by Muse on 19 February 2026, covers 64 townhouses on the northern Oastler site arranged around a series of courtyards and 33 townhouses on Chain Street centred on a new community green.

Phase one site	Townhouses
Oastler (northern site)	64
Chain Street	33

Outline plans were also approved for the wider regeneration, which Muse said would include more than 300 apartments and about 400 apartments at Kirkgate. Muse said a detailed planning application for phase two would be submitted later in 2026.

Once complete, City Village will include up to 1,000 homes alongside retail, leisure and community space, according to Muse. The masterplan, as described by WYCA, covers the Kirkgate, Oastler and Chain Street sites.

Councillor Andrew Judson, Bradford Council's Executive Member for Economy, Regeneration and Planning, said: "This transformational project is now moving from planning into delivery. These sites have played an important role in Bradford's history and we are now preparing them for a new future at the heart of our city centre."

The funding

The demolition and enabling works are being paid for by the first release of capital from £30m secured for City Village through Homes England's Brownfield, Infrastructure and Land (BIL) fund, Muse said. When Muse announced on 6 November 2024 that Bradford Council's Executive Board had approved plans to enter into a grant funding agreement with Homes England, it described the sum as £29.9m of provisional BIL funding to support demolition of the Oastler and Kirkgate shopping centres.

The scheme has also secured £13.2m from WYCA, which Muse described as a strategic partner. ECF put the WYCA contribution at £13.2m of in-principle funding when it submitted its planning applications in September 2025.

City Village is one of 15 places identified in the Strategic Place Partnership between WYCA and Homes England. According to WYCA, the partnership was signed at UKREiiF in Leeds on 16 May 2023 and was the third such partnership Homes England had entered into.

Programme

The timetable has moved since the partners' earlier statements. In September 2025 ECF said it expected Oastler demolition to begin later that year, with phase one work starting in spring 2026. In February 2026 Muse said the Kirkgate Shopping Centre would close later in the year, with demolition starting towards the end of 2026.

Muse now says a six-month internal strip-out is under way at the former Kirkgate Shopping Centre, with external demolition due to start in spring 2027. The Kirkgate site will eventually take hundreds of apartments across two later phases.

Across both sites, Metropolitan will dismantle the buildings piece by piece using specialist machinery, Muse said. Screening and water suppression will be used to control dust, work will take place in standard daytime hours, and some roads will be temporarily closed, have lanes closed or have traffic controls installed during the programme.

Bradford Council, ECF and Metropolitan Demolition said they would keep residents, businesses and stakeholders informed with regular updates as work progresses.

The wider City Village team includes 5plus Architects, re-form Landscape Architecture, Avison Young, Cushman & Wakefield and Turner & Townsend.

Tom Bridges, Executive Regional Director of the North East, Yorkshire and the Humber at Homes England, said clearing the way for the 97 homes was just the start, and that Homes England looked forward to working with Bradford Council, ECF and partners as the scheme moved from demolition into construction.

The Oastler demolition is due to run for about eight months, with the townhouse build expected to start in summer 2027.