Quintet gets ball rolling on 1,500-home Oldham scheme
Casey, Grasscroft Property, Barratt Redrow, Kellen Homes, and Wain Homes are seeking public feedback on plans to redevelop 169 acres around Beal Valley and Broadbent Moss.
Originally earmarked for 2,000 homes in the Places for Everyone joint spatial plan for Greater Manchester, the pair of Oldham sites are being readied for 1,500 properties under plans being progressed by the consortium of housebuilders.
The vision for the scheme, located north-east of Oldham, also includes:
- 11 acres of employment land
- A local centre offering shops, services, and community facilities
- A new east–west link road connecting Heyside to Moorside and enhanced public transport connections
- A Metrolink stop at Cop Road on the Oldham – Rochdale line between Derker and Shaw and Crompton
- Around 222 acres of green space, including wetlands, wildlife habitats, and biodiversity improvements
A public consultation on the plans is now live and will run until early August. In addition, two drop-in events are being held which will give the community the opportunity to view the proposals in more detail and speak to the project team.
- Friday, 11 July – St. Thomas’ Moorside Community Hall, 3–8pm
- Monday, 14 July – St. Anne’s Rugby Club, 3–8pm
The sites are both predominantly Green Belt but are allocated for development in PfE. A group of Oldham Councillors tried to withdraw the local authority from the plan but this bid was slapped down by deputy prime minister Angela Rayner.
What happened to the community golf course?
By Anonymous
No more houses
By Roy bartlett
Yes more houses
By Roy bartlett
No more houses we haven’t got the schools or doctors or jobs leave the fields alone
By Anonymous
These are very poorly located sites for a development of this size. They are virtually as far away from motorway connections as it is possible to be in Oldham, roads in the locality are already nearly gridlocked at busy times. Making your way by car out of Oldham or to Manchester involves going through or past town centres whichever way you go. Services such as main sewers in the area are old and of limited capacity, and the River Beal, which is just a small stream, will be the dumping ground for surface water for these and other new developments in the area – problems ahead for those downstream. The new link road up to Ripponden Road looks like it will need a huge amount of infill to provide the levels, raising the prospect of a prolonged tipping of waste operation which blighted the area for 20 years with the ill fated golf course idea – in fact more tipping revenue is the thing that might make the Broadbent Moss end of the development viable. Very poor thinking by the GM and Oldham planners, if you are going to have to use Green Belt land at least use that which is far better located for motorway connections, services, access etc., much better Green Belt sites with those qualities do exist in Oldham and would not generate anyway near the amount of problems that these sites are going to.
By Anonymous
Just hope the national grid will cope with all these new dwellings further stretching demand.
By Anonymous
This is an absolute disgrace. The land is not suitable for housing. It’s greenbelt and boggy. The builders will catch a cold building on this.
By Geoff Ralphs
I tend to agree with “Anonymous” over the unsuitability of this site for a development of this size. The drawbacks mentioned are real, not imaginary. I also understand that it was some years into the GMSF/PfE process, almost just before the planned public examination of the proposals, that the strategic planners at GM Combined Authority and Oldham realised that they could not even get into the Broadbent Moss part of the planned development without the construction of a long new access road across green land requiring major construction and taking traffic to the Saddleworth hills side of the town, so that it will have to come back through Oldham town and surrounding towns to get anywhere such as to Manchester or motorways. . That is neither strategic nor planning!
By K. W.
What strikes me here is the massive change in numbers from the original GMSF proposals. From distant memory, Broadbent Moss was originally allocated 2400 units, Beal Valley around 500, and land at Northern Steels and adjacent sites around a couple of hundred, a total of just over 3000 units in the original GMSF draft plan. Broadbent Moss was reduced to 1450 units in PfE, but now the proposal appears to be 1500 units for the entire combined Broadbent Moss, Beal Valley, Northern Steels and adjacent sites. The original numbers have been halved, they may be reduced further when they encounter the ground conditions there. In PfE, Oldham now has 1500 units at this site, 460 at Cowlishaw, 138 at Chew Brook, 175 at Coal Pit Lane, 60 at Rosary Road, and 30 at Bottom Field Farm which was a brownfield site anyway, a total of 2363 units. Added to these are the 2000 units in Oldham Town Centre that the council keep bleating about, but which the council themselves have admitted in developer meetings are “mostly unviable”, and will probably never happen as no one will put the money up – they have been part of the HSL for many years now. Given the original target numbers for the GMSF and PfE, now increased substantially by Angela Rayner’s Labour government, it seems there is a serious shortage of sites looming in Oldham.
By P. W.
Who actually owns the land that this project is going to be built on?
By Gillian Dancey