Cheshire East Local Plan enters eleventh round of consultation

Cheshire East Council’s Local Plan will next week take another step towards adoption as consultation begins on final amendments to the blueprint for the borough’s development.

The consultation on main modifications to the Local Plan has been called by planning inspector Stephen Pratt and will run for six weeks from 6 February to 20 March.

This follows nearly three years of public comments and submissions on the council’s proposed strategic blueprint for the borough’s development to 2030. Most recently the Local Plan underwent a further six-week public consultation, which ended on October 20.

In December, Pratt wrote that the locations and extent of development proposed in the plan seem “appropriate, justified, effective, deliverable and soundly based”. He also said that issues relating to other strategic policies in the plan “seem to be capable of resolution by modifications”.

Pratt added that the council’s further proposed changes to the Local Plan seemed to address the changes “necessary to ensure that the revised plan is sound and legally compliant”.

Cllr Ainsley Arnold, cabinet member for housing and planning, said: “It is gratifying to see our Local Plan moving forward firmly towards adoption. The plan is the council’s most important tool for shaping development in Cheshire East to 2030 and I am pleased the hard work of our officers and members has paid off. This will be the eleventh round of public consultations and this Local Plan is one of the most consulted on in the country. There has been unprecedented interest in the consultation process and I’m sure this engagement will have allowed everyone to feel they had the opportunity to have their say.”

Planning and development advisers at Savills said the next round of consultation in the process, due at the start of March, will present an opportunity for developers to promote smaller parcels of land for future development through the planning process. Trevor Adey, planning director at Savills Manchester, said: “Progress of the Local Plan has so far been protected, with the examination into the core strategy completing only in December 2016, after several years in progress.

“This core strategy document has identified large, strategic land allocations only. This still leaves considerable scope for smaller, less strategic land allocations to come forward, particularly in and around smaller towns and service centres across Cheshire East where specific pockets of land for new development have not been identified in the first part of the plan.”

Cheshire East Council received a total of more than 60,000 responses in the 10 previous consultations on its draft Local Plan.

The council is hosting a consultation on the inspector’s draft recommended main modifications to the plan before its final amendment and adoption by the council. To take part in the consultation online visit www.cheshireeast.gov.uk/localplan

For more information about the Local Plan visit the webpage: http://cheshireeast-consult.limehouse.co.uk/portal/planning/cs/library