£350m Stockport 8 clears first bats, buses hurdles

Councillors renewed on Thursday their agreement to grant permission to the 1,328-home scheme and also voted in favour of turning two town centre sites into temporary bus depots.

The £350m Stockport 8 had returned to committee after being provisionally approved in August last year. This was due to a provision in the permission which required additional bat surveys to ensure that there were no impacts on the protected species’ habitat.

Those surveys have shown that there are, in fact, four roosts in buildings identified for demolition to enable the development. The roosts in question sit on the Lundy site, a plot that includes a series of warehouses occupied by the Totally Local Company. The roosts are believed to belong to the common pipistrelle bat.

To move Stockport 8 forward, the council and its development partner ECF will need to secure a bat licence from Natural England enabling them to come up with a strategy to remove the bats from the location and demolish the buildings as planned.

But to do that, they required another approval from the council, which has now been granted.

Now, the ball is in Natural England’s court.

Stockport Council planning officers were optimistic they would get the licence, noting that the Stockport 8 development is a vital part of the borough’s regeneration strategy.

In addition to delivering more than 1,300 homes, it would also develop up to 16,900 sq ft of commercial or community floorspace. The proposals for Stockport 8 also include provisions for a 574% biodiversity net gain.

The demolition of the buildings of the Lundy site will enable the area to become a temporary bus depot. It is one of two sites set for this use, the other being the former Heaton Lane Car Park.

Once these two plots are bus depots, the current bus depot at Daw Bank can be razed with 435 homes built in its place.

You can learn about both applications approved at Thursday’s meeting by searching references DC/097900 and DC/094376 on Stockport Council’s planning portal. Both decisions were in line with officer recommendation.