Cheshire East Council has rubber-stamped its official five-year housing land supply, which they say should protect the countryside for the next five years against unsustainable speculative developers who are driven to build new houses purely for profit.
Deputy Leader Councillor David Brown said it signalled a clear victory for the Council in its fight to fend off unwelcome, unsustainable and unplanned development in the Borough.
The SHLAA (Strategic Housing Land Availability Assessment) has been brought forward by the Council and should fend off speculative housing development applications until the Council's Local Plan document is ratified by the Government later this year.
Councillor David Brown, Deputy Leader of Cheshire East Council, said: "What an achievement for the Council. I would like to thank all the hard-working officers in our planning team who have worked incredibly hard to achieve this over the last few months. We are now in a fantastic position to tackle the issue of unplanned, unwanted and unsustainable development.
"The five year housing supply should allow our towns to grow in a planned and sustainable way and will allow us to continue to finalise the Local Plan document."
The housing sites identified in the SHLAA (Strategic Housing Land Availability Assessment) were approved by the Cheshire East Council's Strategic Planning Board. The SHLAA is required as a key piece of evidence to support the Council's housing policies.
The SHLAA identifies potential housing sites and assesses whether these sites are developable, how many housing units could be accommodated on them and when they could be delivered. It includes all sites being proposed by landowners, developers and agents, as the site search has to be as wide ranging as possible – the Council cannot pick and choose which sites to include in the study.
The SHLAA does not determine whether any site is acceptable for future housing development, as that will be determined through the Local Plan, it does not mean that any site included will be granted planning permission or that any site not included cannot come forward for development in the future.
The Council will now need to review this document annually to ensure that the list of potential sites is kept updated and the Local Plan is 'sound' according to the new National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF). The review will begin in April with a call for sites at this time.
Councillor Brown added: "This latest SHLAA update highlights the significant work that Cheshire East Council has undertaken in identifying a five year housing supply in the Borough; the Town Strategies, the Development Strategy and the Policy Principles documents all being consulted upon within the last year.
"This now enables us to begin addressing the Housing Growth Policy, based around existing towns, to meet local demand and ensure we meet our five year housing supply target of 6,510 homes over the next five years."
Around 2,200 sites were considered as part of the Strategic Housing Land Availability Assessment, of these approximately 1,600 sites are considered suitable for housing during the next 15 years, which could potentially provide a total of 49,645 dwellings over the next 15 years.
Click here to view the draft version of the SHLAA, it is a substantial document so will take a while to download, and see which sites have been identified for potential housing in Wilmslow and Handforth.
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The SHLAA is worth downloading. Here's a summary of just some that affect just south Wilmslow, locations and numbers of houses:
Off Upcast lane 163
Off Alderley Rd 110
Cumber Lane 79
Altrincham Rd 22
Ned Yates 100
Chapel Rd 72
Rotherwood Rd 22
Alderley Rd 20
Sunny Bank Dr 12
Stockton Rd 139
Bramley Close 20
Knutsford Rd Chorley 68
Cumber La 6
One wonders how our creaking infrastructure will cope!