Graham’s 3,200-home Charterholme phase: infrastructure and design notes for engineers
Reviewed by Tom Sullivan
First reported on The Construction Index
30 Second Briefing
Graham has been appointed by City of Lincoln Council to design and construct the next phase of the 240-hectare Charterholme development, which will deliver up to 3,200 homes plus a local centre, primary school and mixed commercial and recreational land. The phase includes a new link road tying the Phase 1a western access from Skellingthorpe Road to the Phase 1b eastern access from Tritton Road, with associated drainage, utilities, street lighting, landscaping and plot upfilling. Detailed design will run through 2026, with main construction targeted to start in 2027, subject to planning and budget approvals.
Technical Brief
- Charterholme covers ~240 ha, implying relatively low-density housing with substantial non-residential and green infrastructure landtake.
- A proposed ‘spine route’ will traverse the site, forming the primary vehicular, cycling and walking corridor.
- New routes include dedicated cycling and walking facilities, indicating segregated or priority active-travel corridors in design.
- Link road geometry must tie into two pre-built accesses: Skellingthorpe Road (Phase 1a, 2024) and Tritton Road (Phase 1b, 2025).
- Graham’s scope includes full utilities corridors: new drainage, power, comms and other service diversions/extensions.
- Upfilling of adjacent plots suggests bulk earthworks to raise development platforms and manage surface-water pathways.
- Prior Tritton Road gateway and railway bridge works by Graham provide existing structural and geotechnical interface constraints.
- Phased delivery across multiple landowners (City of Lincoln Council, Lindum Western Growth Community Ltd) will drive staged infrastructure handovers.
Our Take
Graham’s role at Charterholme extends a run of large public-sector and council-led regeneration work in the UK, with recent pieces in our database showing it simultaneously delivering town-centre renewal in Solihull and a Milton Keynes market redevelopment.
The long lead-in to main construction in 2027 on the 240ha Charterholme site mirrors Graham’s use of pre-construction services on schemes like Holbeche Place in Solihull, suggesting the council is prioritising early contractor involvement to de-risk phasing and infrastructure interfaces such as the Tritton Road rail bridge.
With Charterholme in Lincoln alongside education work at Castle Rock School and nuclear-related infrastructure in Cumbria, Graham is building a geographically spread social-infrastructure portfolio across England, which can help smooth workload and resource planning over the 2024–2027 window highlighted here.
Prepared by collating external sources, AI-assisted tools, and Geomechanics.io’s proprietary mining database, then reviewed for technical accuracy & edited by our geotechnical team.
