According to the latest Government figures, of the ten local authorities to adopt local plans last year Cheshire East Council was ranked third in terms of the amount of land lost from the Green Belt.
According to a report released by the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government on Thursday, 4th October, there was a decrease of 600 hectares in the area of designated Green Belt land in the borough from March 2017 to March 2018.
However, of the ten local authorities which adopted new boundaries for the designated Green Belt in 2017/18 Cheshire East Council had the largest area of designated Green Belt land, double any of the other authorities, so this represents only a 1% change from 40,730 hectares to 40,140 hectares.
Local authorities making changes to their Green Belt boundaries were contacted to obtain explanations for the changes.
A spokesperson from Cheshire East Council said "Cheshire East In line with the government-appointed inspector's recommendations, a number of sites were removed from the Green Belt upon adoption of the Cheshire East Local Plan Strategy in July 2017, to assist in meeting the objectively-assessed needs for development in the borough."
Land designated as Green Belt in England was estimated at 1,629,510 hectares, around 12.5% of the land area of England as of 31 March 2018. Overall there was a decrease of 5,070 hectares (0.3%) between 31 March 2017 and 31 March 2018.
Of the ten local authorities reporting changes to their designated Green Belt areas, Coventry and Warwick contributed over 50% of this change between them. For Warwick, this represents a 7% decrease of their total Green Belt from 20,550 to 19,070 hectares. Whilst in Coventry the amount of land designated as Green Belt has been halved, from 3,020 to 1,480 hectares, however a significant proportion has been designated as Local Green Space instead, and is therefore still under the same level of protection from development.
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In allowing the continued destruction of our green spaces, CEC are condemning the region to a future of urbanised mediocrity and are literally killing the golden goose.
We have already seen that the widening of the junction between the A34 and Dean Row Road has been an absolute success, if you ignore the fact that it's not quite two lanes wide at one end (but who's splitting hairs?).
Add in the amazingly quick time it has taken to build and open the SEMMS relief road and how well managed the traffic has been, including lots of joined up thinking about roadworks and I'm sure you will agree that Wilmslow has become a fantastic place to live.