Editor's note: Campaigners are continuing their fight to protect the green belt around Wilmslow from development and they are calling on residents to support them.
Speaking on behalf of the Residents of Wilmslow, Manuel Golding presented the following report at the Wilmslow Town Annual Meeting on Thursday, 25th April.
This report was authored by Manuel Golding and David Lewis.
Residents of Wilmslow came into being just over 12 months ago, a unification of various local groups concerned with possible violation of the town's highly valuable Green Belt which protects Wilmslow from urban sprawl.
RoW has worked diligently to reduce the impact upon the town, for the benefit of all residents, to preserve the green aspect to which we have become accustomed and to which, in all probability, attracted most of its residents to the town – a green and pleasant place in which to live!
We have had numerous in-depth talks with Cheshire East's leaders and planners to mitigate the initial requirement and impact. We have, by various arguments, been successful in reducing the requirement to 400 new homes in Wilmslow over the next 17 years. To meet this target, we have trawled through planning applications and approvals, listed new builds, searched for brown field sites that could be used for development; it was Residents of Wilmslow which initially raised the issue of long term empty offices in the town, some 150 thousand sq ft, and to persuade Cheshire East to start talking with such owners to consider conversions to residential.
We have stated we are totally against any development of any of our Green Belt, for whatever reason. There is no necessity to use any of the Green Belt and we have proven this with our figures. It follows that, because we have the sites and dwelling numbers, that there is absolutely no need or requirement to build anything at all on any of the Royal London site nor on the Adlington Road safeguarded land. However, Wilmslow's Green Belt fields are constantly under threat from developers.
We believe AstraZeneca is a game changer. Sadly a large number of houses in Wilmslow will be going on sale in a couple of years time as AstraZeneca employees decamp to Cambridge. Their homes will add to the housing supply thereby reducing the number of new homes needed. What will happen to the Alderley Park site? It is very unlikely that small biotech companies can be found who would want to set up there so housing development will be the only option. This would absorb a good part of the housing need not just in Wilmslow but in surrounding towns too.
The latest housing need projections published on 9th April show a significant reduction on the levels to be used to calculate the housing need in Cheshire East. Cheshire East have worked to a building rate of 1350 per year, well above the 1150 per year in the NW regional plan. If proportioned around the borough the number of houses needed in Wilmslow would drop to 280.
New sites for possible development are being put forward at the CE Strategic Planning Board on 1st May. These include 174 new houses on partially brown but mostly on greenbelt land, at Rotherwood Road and Ned Yates, Moor Lane. If these were to be accepted there would be 174 + 75 (Royal London) + 225 (Aldington Road) + 202 houses built or with planning permission since April 2010, a total provision of 676 houses, well above the actual need. This count does not include other available brown field sites, which we believe to currently be 202 units plus the constant windfall build level of a very modest 10 per year, making 170 over 17 years. This will total 1048.
The actual present rate of new house building in Wilmslow is around 5 houses per month – 60 per year. If this rate of windfall development continues, alone it would provide more than 1020 houses in Wilmslow in the next 17 years – the period covered by the local plan and this figure is already seen to be too high.
Therefore, far from Wilmslow being "protected" as has often been said elsewhere, we will see a possible new build level over the next 17 years of somewhere in the order of 1286 new homes, well above the 400 the town has been asked to find over the next 17 years.
The AstraZeneca site is a gift from heaven. The jobs there will in the main be exported elsewhere. The site is tailor-made for a secluded housing village, thus relieving communities in the north east of the borough from building blight, from overwhelmed roads, overstretched resources and services.
There is an imminent further public consultation on the three new proposed sites which are primarily in the Greenbelt. Residents of Wilmslow asks all of Wilmslow to take part in the consultation and reject the notion of any development whatsoever in our Greenbelt - we have shown it is a totally unnecessary attempt to rape our Green Belt – once under concrete it is lost forever. We strongly recommend that in your responses you also advocate that Alderley Park/Astra Zeneca site be used for housing.
It is necessary that all Wilmslow's residents be under no illusion as to the threat - we need you all to support our position of No to Green Belt development but Yes to Brown site build.
