Wilmslow Town Council has decided to distribute leaflets to every household in Wilmslow to raise awareness of the current Local Plan consultation and to emphasise where Cheshire East's proposals differ from those in the revised Wilmslow Vision document.
Wilmslow Town Council has agreed to allocate £1500 for the production and distribution of leaflets to raise awareness of Cheshire East's draft plans for the future development of Wilmslow - and to encourage as many as people as possible to get involved in the next stage of consultation.
Speaking at this week's Town Council meeting Cllr Keith Purdom said "After we submitted the Wilmslow Vision we just sat back and thought we were in for a period of respite when within literally days Cheshire East came out with a new consultation document.
"We were absolutely thrilled the number of houses they now proposed in Wilmslow was reduced from 1500 to 400 but we decided not to congratulate ourselves too much on that because the document had not followed completely recommendations we made and probably raised one or two new topics and ambiguities."
In response to this new consultation document the working group has decided that their role now is to encourage as many responses from the public as they possibly can.
Cllr Purdom said "We don't think we should be telling people the answer, we think we should be encouraging them to express whatever thoughts they have got - because there is no doubt that the work we did and particularly the work the Residents of Wilmslow and their sub groups did had a big impact on Cheshire East.
"So if we are going encourage as many responses as possible we'd like to propose the production of a leaflet and paid for distribution to every house in Wilmslow. We debated using volunteers for the distribution but with the time scale we have (deadline is 26th February) and the importance to Wilmslow we felt that it was something that was too important to rely on volunteers."
The leaflet will repeat what the Town Council said in the revised Vision document about the future development of Wilmslow, and highlight where Cheshire East's proposals differ.
Cllr Purdom added "It will emphasise that we believe that the 400 houses for Wilmslow could actually be achieved on brownfield sites and will not need any safeguarded land developed or any greenfield land developed. It will go on to comment specifically about Site BC, which is the site on the Adlington Road which is safeguarded, we have said that we felt that development from 2025 was the earliest but with Cheshire East it is 2015.
"It will comment and draw the comparison between our view that the Site F where Cheshire East are saying 75 houses could be built. We said no to any green belt houses so we say no to any housing development on that site.
"There is also the new the wrinkle in this, out of nowhere has come the proposal to safeguard Site D (pictured above), now I haven't personally heard categorically anybody at Cheshire East say that they will actually take it back out of safeguarding but I know that Manuel Golding (of Row) has had verbal assurances. Nevertheless we will be encouraging people to comment about that site."
Town Councillors have a meeting with either Cllr Michael Jones, the Leader of Cheshire East Council, or the deputy Cllr David Brown, on Wednesday 23rd January when they will ask for clarity on some of these issues. They will then get input from the Residents of Wilmslow group about what they intend to say in the leaflet. They are then aiming to have it distributed during the first week in February.
Cllr Jim Crockett, Chairman of Wilmslow Town Council, said "The important thing now for the people of Wilmslow is to take part in the consultation period which started last week and lasts until the end of February. To get their comments in.
"We're not in a position to make any decisions, the decision is with CEC so it is very important that individuals make their comments through the official channels.
"Once the consultation period is over the planning inspectorate will take a look and give his opinion as to whether it is suitable or not and that should happen in spring 2014."
Cheshire East Council's six-week consultation on their Development Strategy runs until 26th February.
Consultation documents are on the Cheshire East Council website and hard copies are available from Wilmslow Library and Wilmslow Town Council.
Comments
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My first impression, after an admittedly skim-reading, is that the comments made by residents in their responses to the Wilmslow Vision consultation have not fully been taken on board by CEC, with plans still to build on green-belt and a new safe-guarding proposal, which even took the Wilmslow Town Council by surprise.