Three years after consultation began on their Local Plan, Cheshire East Council has published their Local Plan Strategy document today - which will be the blueprint for development in Cheshire East to the year 2030.
Cheshire East has received over 36,000 responses from members of the public about their draft proposals and over the last three years they have evaluated over 100 strategic sites to take into consideration sustainability, including access to public services, open spaces and transport, impact on heritage and health.
Contained in this document is the final list of 37 proposed sites and nine strategic locations that the Council wants to adopt.
The Wilmslow sites located in the Cheshire East Local Plan Strategy - Submission Version are:
• Land to the north of Adlington Road where 200 new dwellings could be built. 135 homes expected during the early part of the plan period (2015-2020) and 65 homes expected during the middle part of the plan period (2020-2025).
• The Royal London site, which is situated in the Cheshire Green Belt has been identified for mixed use development, delivering 75 dwellings, 17,000 - 24,000 square metres of B1 employment space and a hotel.
• Green Belt land between the West Coast Main Line and the A34 Wilmslow bypass has been identified for a new Wilmslow Business Park, which will provide around 25,000 square meters of employment space.
In addition a new village called The North Cheshire Growth Village on the eastern edge of Handforth. The site, which is located within the Green belt on land off the A34 Wilmslow-Handforth Bypass, will provide 1,650 new homes and 12 hectares of employment land. The site would also deliver medical facilities to include a doctor's surgery and pharmacy, public house or restaurant, sports and leisure facilities, community centre, children's day nursery, hotel and new schools.
Safeguarded land, that may be required to meet longer-term development needs stretching well beyond the period of the Local Plan, includes 19.8 hectares of land adjacent to the North Cheshire Growth Village in Handforth East, 14.5 hectares off Prestbury Road and 7.4 hectares west of Upcast Lane, which would also require an adjustment to the Green Belt boundary.
Previous documents proposed to remove land to the west of Royal London from the Green Belt and designate it as safeguarded land, that may be required to serve development needs in the longer term, however this has now been marked as protected open space.
Cllr Michael Jones said "What you have not got is sites all over Wilmslow. Only because Handforth East is delivering, the actual target for Wilmslow would be, we think, certainly over 1,500 houses and for Handforth you could argue up to another 800."
I asked Cllr Jones about the current planning application from Jones Homes for 203 homes on the 10 ha site off Adlington Road. He told me "Because of the Handforth appeal on Coppice Lane, where we were told safeguarded land has to go forward first and foremost, we know we won't be able to defeat that on appeal. The planning inspector has said that safeguarded land must come forward ahead of anything else, including brownfield sites.
"We are working very closely with the developer to get the best deal we can in every sense, including highways, mitigations, design, impact, type of affordability and we are being very aggressive with them and they are listening."
Speaking about brownfield sites, Cllr Jones told me "We have analysed every brownfield sites put forward by every group there are not enough brownfield sites and if there were we would always go there. All the work the RoW did has been looked at, most of them are brownfield sites in the green belt or in other areas but we have looked at all of them, they have all been considered. "
I also asked for clarification on the Council's position regarding other sites which are not included in the Core Strategy, such as land off Welton Drive which WCE Properties are promoting as a sustainable location for a development of up to 100 houses.
Cllr Jones said "We will refuse it, if it is not in the plan why would we support it?"
Councillor David Brown, Strategic Communities Portfolio Holder and Deputy Leader of the Council, said "The Local Plan is a keystone for the future of the area and supports our number one priority – Jobs Led Growth. The plan has been developed to support the generation of jobs focused around the M6 corridor, for which we have received £800 million of central Government funding, but also ensures that the beauty and character of Cheshire East is retained.
"This plan is about developing Cheshire East to maintain its reputation as the best place to live in the north west, whilst providing for our younger generation so they can live and work in the area they were born. It is about the future, job availability, excellent educational standards and a great quality of life. This plan, coupled with our five year housing supply, is also about protecting the residents of Cheshire East against unwanted, unsustainable and unplanned development."
Cllr Brown added "In arriving at these sites we have considered comments from the residents of Cheshire East, from Town & Parish Councils and from developers. Added to this our plan has also been reviewed by central Government inspectors to ensure that it is robust and meets all statutory guidelines.
"I believe it must be one of the most comprehensive and consulted Local Plans to have been produced in England. I would like to thank everybody who has contributed to this process and would especially like to thank the large number of people who have responded in support of our plans. Some people will be pleased with the result and others will be unhappy, this plan has taken all views into consideration and I believe meets the requirements of Cheshire East residents both now and through to 2030.
"This document is a key milestone in the process and any further representations/comments will be collated and forwarded to the Government Planning Inspector for his consideration."
The Strategic Planning Board will comment on the document when they meet on Wednesday, 26th February, Full Council will then take a vote and once published the Council will formal representations. These comments will then be submitted along with the Core Strategy to the Secretary of State who will ask that the document is examined by the Planning Inspectorate.
Finally I asked Michael Jones about the likelihood of any changes being made to the document before it is submitted to the Secretary of State.
He replied "I am not in charge of the Local Plan, that is Councillor Brown's job, but there has been such a level of communication and consultation and such depth of learning already - both from developers and residents - that I find it very difficult to believe that anything could come up that ought to be changed but anything that needs to be changed needs to go through a sustainability review and that would inevitably delay the plan and that would be for me difficult but can't say no as that would be very wrong."
Click here to view the Cheshire East Local Plan Strategy documents.
Comments
Here's what readers have had to say so far. Why not add your thoughts below.
Cllr Jones, please remind me when did I have to opportunity to vote for the Planning Inspector?
Sorry, I thought I lived in a democracy where public sector workers carry out the plans of our elected representatives and so uphold the majority wishes of the people.
Silly me, I must have overslept and have woken up in China.
Either that or you are trying to shift blame for your own culpability onto a faceless official in the planning department.
Areas like Bramhall, Cheadle and Hale all retain their Cheshire addresses despite no longer being with the county.
Whilst the council is wrong as often happens, there are also things perhaps we should consider. I think we should be asking why all of us with 4 or 5 bedroomed houses and only 2 of us living there are not either downsizing or taking in lodgers! That way there would be no housing shortage - there are just so many families that split up and each need their own home, aren't there? And where is the social housing?
Or perhaps they should relook at the way we pay council taxr? Not something I want, but probably save us having more new houses on our green belt!
CEC don't appear to have taken into account the BAE Woodford site, Adlington Road development, the development just south of Marks and Spencer, the Royal London site and the Handforth 'village' developments in their intirety.
The combined totals must be heading towards 3,000 properties. As previously mentioned the A34 bypass 'joke' already gets choked at the two roundabouts at the junctions of the A555 (M&S) and Stanley Green (B&Q) on a daily bases. Tunnels under these two roads were rejected at initial concept - more short sighted planning. As I recall, the upgraded junctions at these points, when the SEMMS link is developed, will be controlled by lights. With all this additional traffic it will be hell. I forgot to mention the additional traffic caused by the new Next development to the north of Tesco/M&S. So within a radius of a couple of miles the entire area will be saturated in development.
People are concerned that this may mean a grab by GMC to take control of the area - I have my suspisions that CEC think this already and are just cashing in their chips asap, particulary as the 'Airport City' development is so close to Wilmslow as well. You may recall they hesitated about giving us recycling bins as there was talk then of a merger and 'why should CEC provide bins now' as they are being taken over by GMC.
Could GMC be any worse than CEC? At least we would be talking to the council that controls the total infrastructure unlike now where CEC doesn't inform/liase with the local authority in any meaningful way, as previously commented on.
Checking my tax band, I'd be about £80 better of as well!
Councils and their so-called planning experts, along with NGOs/Quangos and Committees are on cruise control with their own polices - look at the latest disaster created by this shower we are run by - the Somerset Levels. The locals new what was needed, they were just ignored.
How is it that this does not appear on the Local Plan? Does its absence from the Plan mean that planning permission for it will be automatically denied?
The situation at the moment is that developers have a land grab on trying to get in as many developments as possible and trying to use up the land which they have "banked" for future use. The site with access from Welton Drive is on Green Belt Land which should remain as Green Belt, but, given the spineless nature of CEC and the fact that they could not get their Land Plan in on time, that area of land remains at risk from development - so get your comments in.
A spokesman for the Department for Communities and Local Government said: “This Government’s policy is to support locally-led development. We have put councils’ local plans at the heart of deciding where houses should and shouldn’t go and given communities more say on what’s best for them through community-led neighbourhood plans.”
Nearly 40,000 responses to the plan and not one major change. CEC have decided what they wanted from the start - game over. I'll remember at the ballot box. Lib/lab/Con what's the worst least option though?
To all of you readers wake-up Wilmslow is under threat make no mistake, if you live near a piece of green land your field may be the next field for this treatment.
The relief road (to the airport and its associated cities on green belt) is years away so the gridlock and disturbance is coming. We will be a factory town with hundreds of identical boxes for the workers to exist in.