The proposed development attempts to achieve a balance between the redevelopment of the Site into a vibrant and fully accessible area and the conservation of the historic and cultural significance of the Site. The challenge is to ensure that the Site has a long term future and to do this the buildings must have viable uses that generate sufficient revenue to allow for their proper upkeep. This has to be done with the minimum of alteration to the existing fabric of the historic buildings consistent with allowing them to be code compliant and able to be used safely. This has been achieved by selecting proposed uses that fit the current layout of the buildings and where the original fabric can largely be conserved with interventions kept to a minimum.

To achieve the arts hub that is necessary to energise the southern part of the site it is proposed to erect two new buildings to house gallery and multi-purpose spaces. The new buildings have been sited to avoid major impacts on the fabric of the existing historic buildings whilst providing new access and allowing new uses in the adjacent historic buildings.

The proposed development leave the site accessible to all members of the public as open space that they can walk through and with many common areas of the buildings available to the public even if they are not using any of the facilities on the Site. There are also spaces that will be retained and have their interiors conserved as interpretation spaces that will allow both formal and informal interpretation of the site. These interpretation spaces are in all the major buildings on the Site.

The proposed development will leave all of the significant historic buildings intact and with very little alteration to their external fabric. There will be some intrusion into the historic interiors but this will be minimal and will be offset by the restoration of much of the interior of the buildings to something close to the original design intention with the removal of modern insertions. The primary external spaces, the Police Parade Ground and the Prison Yard, are left in their present form with no intrusion into the historic space. Similarly the walls that surround the site and divide it between Police, Prison and Magistracy will all be retained and conserved. Such minimal alteration as is proposed to the external walls is to provide good public access to allow the Site to be genuinely open to all people.