Developer looks set to build 68 homes on greenfield site in Wilmslow

Selling England by the pound.

There won't be any green spaces left at this rate. I was surprised the green belt status was removed from the former grazing pasture off Stanneylands Road, particularly in light of how strictly the application for the stables at Little Stanneylands was dealt with in the late 1970s. Is nothing sacred ? Perhaps not.

This will join up with the larger development by Bellway Homes (135 properties with access from Cumber Lane at Stormy Point), and will no doubt be followed by further smaller developments filling in the gaps to eventually create hundreds of new homes on a site which was formerly greenbelt.
However, in 2017 the Council removed this area at Upcast Lane and Cumber Lane (Safeguarded Land LPS 59) from the Green Belt and identified it as Safeguarded Land "suitable for residential development in the future".
We are now approaching that "future".
Expect traffic chaos.

This is a disgraceful application by a Welsh company (who claim to be family friendly )by attempting to put a wrecking ball through a greenfield site and surrounding infrastructure. It demonstrates all that is bad about greed. No matter what the sales pitch says, they dont care a stuff about how important these spaces are to local life. This is a special , small , quiet and quintessentially English part of Wilmslow, families, fields and a wonderful cricket club.
68 houses, juggernauts full of cement, bricks, tarmac…….white vans , 150 cars, more dogs, bikes, and of course people, in an already over developed square mile where the local infrastructure is already buckling.
There is plenty of green in North Wales to mess about with, but please not here.
I hope our local representatives can send this application back where it came from and leave us and our endangered greenfields alone.

I do not believe access from Upcast Lane will be approved. Too narrow, no footpaths for much of the route to Lindow County Primary School. The only viable access to LPS59 is from Stormy Point where cottages and a house will be demolished. It is all laid out in the current Local Plan. It is correct to say that the Bellway 135 houses is only the start of a development on LPS59 that will bring over 500 houses, could be 750 if adjacent brown sites are included.

Also, it is true that the current Local Plan set aside LPS58 and 59 to be developed post 2030. This would mean the Green Belt boundaries will not have to be altered. I appreciate this rush to build on the part of the government has put an enormous strain on Local councils but, if there really is a policy which puts brown field first, grey belt second and green belt last for development then it is time to see CEC being much more reactive in producing an audit of where brown and grey exist around Wilmslow. RoW has produced one for them and needs to know this is being given serious attention.

My fear is, just like the last time round green belt land will be unnecessarily allocated for development. The equivalent of at least one of the sites now developed, or under construction has been built as windfall, and on brown sites identified by RoW.

We at RoW will have to work extremely hard to bring sense to this rush to build. Support needed.

Roger Bagguley

Residents of Wilmslow (RoW)

I will support it as long as there is 10% reserved to house migrants and asylum seekers.

Roger, let's not forget the proposed 1500 plus housing development at Handforth Garden Village is also on greenbelt land.
It seems we're reached the stage where the designation of green, brown or grey, which we thought meant something in fact means very little, especially as the government have instructed all councils not only CEC to ramp up house building by fair means or foul.

The Handforth Village is allocated in the current Local Plan totals. Thus, was taken out of the Green Belt in 2017. I am clear on Green Belt but reclassifying some as being Grey does worry me. Jones Homes on land behind Welton Drive has already publicly declared it is grey - hope they get a bloody nose on this!

Just to be sure Paul, it is RoW that needs public support, not developers building bespoke houses for those with needs.

Another non-trivial issue is the state of the land itself. It is a bog and is often flooded. Are they going to build these houses on stilts and sell them with water gardens as a feature?

Roger, that's the point I was making, Green becomes Grey or disappears altogether, which is why I brought up Handforth Garden Village which as you know is being built in an area which was formerly Greenbelt but was "reclassified" in 2017.
Basically what's the point of Greenbelt at all if the designation can be altered according to the latest government dictates (or whims) on house building, instructions that councils are "forced" to follow, and which takes us back to Cumber Lane, Upcast Lane and who knows where next?
Ps. I doubt Paul O'Neil's comment was to be taken seriously

Having worked in Upcast Lane for a number of years I know first hand what the traffic problem is like with the school and cricket club and that's before a developer is proposing to build 68 new homes, maybe the developer would like to rent a cottage and live in it in for six months if C/E gives him the go ahead and let him see what problems it will cause. Utter madness !

So what does 'Safeguarded Land' and 'Greenfield site' mean anyway? Apparently nothing. Build where ever you like!

Having got myself involved in Local Planning from the beginning of the process which ended in 2017 when the Plan was adopted, I have to accept the order brought to developing in and around our towns and villages of classifying land as being green belt and brownfield. Of course we get angry about loss of green belt, and will strongly object, but without order and robust policies, developers will build anywhere. They own land willy nilly all over the country. Around Wilmslow most of this is green belt.

The current rush to build is scary. Currently we are in Limboland and it feels like being up a creek without a paddle. A lot of people are going to be very upset. The lucky ones who escape, and the land adjacent to them remains in the Green Belt, the policies that come with the revised Plan will give them some protection against mass development and what changes can be made to existing properties.

Thus, green, brown and grey will keep some order to what sadly will happen as the population continues to grow and, we are told, there is a need for housing. I'm not convinced this requirement need to lead to so much loss of green belt.

Butterfly Bank, Jones Homes proposed development behind Welton Drive and Stockton Rd means there are 3 greenbelt sites under threat, within a one mile radius of one another. We stand together to defeat these schemes.