Proud of his Irish American roots, Peter Mullin, a successful businessman, generous philanthropist, and legend in the world of automobile collecting, wanted to share his unique and extensive classic car collection with a European audience. After exploring several potential sites, Peter fell in love with Oxfordshire. The former RAF Enstone base not only provides an available brownfield site large enough to house the development, but an existing use as a motorsports circuit and historical connection to the automobile industry, with Silverstone just down the road.

The design concept for the Mullin Museum is a contemporary take on an English country house, within a parkland setting with extensive landscaping and tree planting, and a series of estate buildings set around it.

As a new building, it felt appropriate that the architecture should be entirely contemporary, rather than a reworking of a traditional building form, such as a neo-classical mansion. The majority of the development is consolidated within a single crescent shaped form, with a basement storey helping to reduce the massing. The use of locally quarried limestone for the lower storey provides a link to the building traditions of the area, whilst the use of metal cladding panels and glazing brings in themes linked to both aviation and car design, and also the functional commercial and agricultural buildings widely found within the vicinity.

The Museum Exhibition Building takes an exciting sculptural form and is planned as a unique landmark building and key public attraction.

The Workshop and Warehouse are ‘invisible buildings’ designed into the landscape and covered with sedum roof. The simple design is befitting of their functional use.

The four holiday homes in the larger more prominent settings to the north and east of the site have been carefully designed to follow the form of traditional agricultural farmsteads, with a series of pitched roof barns and outbuildings set around a series of courtyards. Vernacular form was felt to be appropriate in the context.

On the eastern part of the site, around the newly created wildflower meadows and ponds, the holiday homes have been designed to be low level to reduce their massing and in turn lower their landscape impact. The use of local limestone, timber and profiled metal roofing and cladding are all materials that are widely found in the area.

The holiday homes around The Mullin Museum are designed for members of the car collecting community, providing a unique opportunity for them to store, display, maintain and exercise their cars, and to share their passion for the automobile with like-minded neighbours. The sale of the 56 properties will fund a remarkable new museum to allow the public to enjoy one of the greatest collections of early European cars in the world.

28 holiday homes have been approved as part of the outline application. The new proposal increases the number of units to 56, however, the overall area of residential development is significantly reduced (circa. 50%) when compared to the approved scheme. This change is key to the viability of delivering the public museum.

The Mullin Automotive Museum is a public attraction and so will be open to bookings from the general public. The wider site will be accessible via a new public right of way across the south of the site, linking existing public rights of way through the site, giving residents more access to open spaces and connections to the local highway network. The new public right of way (bridleway) from the B4022 and along the south of the site follows the route of an ancient ‘drove road’ that is understood to have been used to drive livestock to market from Aberystwyth to Uxbridge since the 13th century. The section through Enstone Airfield has been closed for over 70 years since the early 1940’s when the airbase was constructed.

The Mullin Project is committed to delivering a world-class classic car museum in West Oxfordshire that benefits and works with the local community.

In 2020 the Outline Planning Consent was agreed with an associated £1.7m Section 106 Community benefits package. The Mullin Automotive Museum team are committed to honouring this financial contribution and will work with the Community Forum members to assess each community’s needs and how and where they would like to see this money used. Whilst the team can collate this information and feed it back to the local authorities, it is ultimately up to the District and County Councils to determine how it is spent.

In addition to the Section 106 agreement, the project has developed a Community and Cultural Strategy, to be submitted as part of the new application. The Strategy provides details about how the aims of The Mullin Museum will be delivered, including the following benefits, which have already been discussed with the Community Forum.

• Education and Training: Schools programme, apprenticeships, support for local charities working with young people on skills and employability

• Community Inclusion and Employment: Local recruitment and employment scheme, local discounts, free staff travel by shuttle bus routes, emphasis on using local suppliers and producers, spaces for community bookings

• Cultural Celebration: Open days and walking tours, rewilding and biodiversity projects, history project and many more.

Across the development, the scheme is expected to create several hundred new jobs through the construction phase and on into the operation phase, at a time when investment in the local economy and wider UK economy is going to be crucial to economic recovery.

The Mullin will offer training schemes and apprenticeship opportunities, with a commitment to ensuring local people have access to these jobs through an education and training programme with local schools, working with young people on skills and employability. This, and other initiatives, will be laid out in our Community and Cultural Strategy.

To further ensure the local community has the opportunity to directly benefit from the jobs available, a community inclusion and employment strategy will be developed. This will include working with local recruitment companies. Incentives for employees will include discounts and free staff travel by shuttle bus from key local settlements.

Many jobs will be within the automotive sector and will include skilled maintenance and engineering jobs. Oxfordshire has a skilled and experienced workforce within this sector.

The opportunities will begin from the construction phase, with an emphasis on using local suppliers and producers, through to completion and day to day running, including:

• Tourism (Museum Curators, Receptionists, Retail, Security, Office, Drivers, Admin, Cleaning)

• Hospitality (Managers, Kitchen Brigades, Floor Team)

• Automotive Engineering (Service, Repair, Maintenance)

• Facilities Management (Building Services and Site Maintenance)

• Landscape (Management, Maintenance)

• Construction (Build Phase)

The museum will be open to the general public and we will be actively encouraging the local community to visit and enjoy the museum and grounds. The Community and Cultural Strategy will focus on ensuring residents from all social and economic backgrounds can access the benefits this project will deliver, including visiting and enjoying the facilities on offer.

We are exploring various incentives around this such as:

• Free ticket days for local people

• A season pass for those within the local community who intend to visit more often

• Local schools in the immediate vicinity of the Mullin will be invited for education visits to the Mullin, including free travel.

A Transport Assessment was undertaken for the consented masterplan and this has been recalculated to take into account the additional 28 holiday homes within the updated proposal. Although they are holiday homes and anticipated to have intermittent occupancy, for the purposes of the transport assessment, traffic movements were modelled as if they were private dwellings with 100% occupancy. In the context of the overall development, the traffic movements related to the 28 additional holiday homes will be minimal.

The project team is aware that transport and traffic is a key local issue. The Community Forum is in ongoing discussions about how to ensure traffic movements on the local road network are managed as efficiently as possible and the impact on the condition of the roads is not further degraded.

The Mullin is committed to mitigating the impact of traffic travelling through the neighbouring villages and as such will be seeking to establish a dedicated Community Transport Forum, comprised of the principal visitor related businesses in the area, to help manage the flow and distribution of traffic. This will include assessing the impact of the Museum once it is open and operating.

We are exploring sustainable transport initiatives, including:

• A shuttle bus service using vintage buses converted to electricity running to and from Oxford Parkway Station and the Park and Ride facilities

• A free shuttle bus service for staff from the major towns in the area including Banbury, Bicester, Woodstock, Chipping Norton and Charlbury

• 20% of parking spaces will have EV charging points for electric cars

• The Mullin will offer discounted tickets to incentivise visitors to travel by rail and use the free electric shuttle bus service.

Museum signage will direct visitors via an alternate route, not using the B4030, however it is accepted that people will follow their sat nav rather than the travel directions issued by the museum. The Mullin team are proposing to work with WODC and OCC to put in place traffic calming measures on the B4030, including changes to the speed limit through villages which may assist in encouraging sat navs to direct traffic along faster roads (A44 and B4022).

As part of the Outline application an environmental noise assessment was carried out. The following noise impacts were identified:

• Noise from use of the demonstration road

• Noise from ancillary uses including servicing areas and mechanical services plant

• Noise from changes to traffic

It was concluded that noise levels resulting from the redevelopment of the site will be no greater than those previously experienced when used as a performance car track by Vision Motorsport and will not cause significant impact to local residents in line with the national policy aims of the NPPF.

The application includes new holiday homes that will be constructed as part of the development, which will be closer to the demonstration road than any village resident. Any planning permission will also be subject to a noise limiting condition the same or very similar to the one included in the outline consent. Furthermore, noise control will be a fundamental condition of community rules, therefore ensuring that the use of the demonstration road will be self-regulating and ensure that local village residents are protected from any potential unreasonable behaviour arising from the use of the site.

The mechanical services plant will be designed not to exceed background noise levels at the nearest noise sensitive properties.

Noise from changes in road traffic will be negligible. The assessment concluded that the proposed development would not cause significant noise impacts to either nearby residential occupiers or occupiers of the proposed lodges in accordance with the policy aims of National Planning Policy Framework.

We understand the construction process can cause disruption to traffic and neighbours. Before any construction commences a Framework Construction Traffic Management Plan (CTMP) and Routeing Strategy will be developed. This will outline the key construction traffic principles, including routeing and measures that are expected to be put in place. The Plan will be prepared and submitted as part of the planning application.

Approximately 75% of the site is degraded brownfield land. Landscape effects of the proposal will substantially enhance both the landscape setting and local biodiversity. The scheme will add substantial areas of native species woodland, trees and hedgerows, with an aim of achieving a biodiversity net gain of 60-70% across the site.

Almost all of the remaining undeveloped land would be managed as conservation/wild-flora meadow resulting in significant ecological gain, through the retention of valued habitats and the creation of habitats and features that will be of value to a number of species.

The Mullin Automotive Museum seeks to establish a series of modern buildings that are appropriately sited and integrated into the landscape. Their built form will consider orientation and best practice for thermal performance, ensuring opportunities for passive measures are maximised to minimise energy consumption.

The team have been investigating sustainable energy sources for the site. The most efficient way to use electricity is to generate the power required on site using Combined Heat and Power (CHP) thus avoiding up to 7-8% loss in transporting across the power grid. The by-product of electricity generation is heat from the turbines and this is typically lost up cooling towers. CHP captures this otherwise wasted energy in a district heating network to heat localised buildings. The most sustainable solution for the site is therefore anticipated to be CHP, with the by-product of heat used for central heating and hot water for the Mullin Crescent and Exhibition Space, and the electricity used to power lighting and air source heat pumps for the 20 detached holiday homes. CHP can be powered by natural gas, lpg, biomass and other alternatives. The team are taking a longterm view of the UK energy strategy and investigating the most sustainable solutions.