Bloor eyes 40 acres of Macclesfield Green Belt for 200 homes

40 acres to provide 200 homes. Good to know the major housebuilders are taking the housing crisis seriously and maximising the development land they own… not!

@Anonymous 12:35pm – The BNG requirements don’t help much!

@Abots 12:50pm – the BNG requirements aren’t a bad thing in the context of the abundance of species in the UK having been depleted by a third over the past 50 years. If planning has become only about delivering houses then, frankly, we’re all doomed.

Bellway & others cant sell what they have built in Macclesfield. Plus Bellway have been hit by pain at Whirley bog.

“Now” is correct. BNG requirements help create nicer places for people to actually live. For example having ponds, rainwater swales, new woodland and meadow areas so people can actually have some green space and wildlife near their home. Or perhaps all people want is roads with no pavements, bland copy and paste houses crammed together with tiny gardens and plastic lawns.

@December 05, 2024 at 1:35 pm
By now

I’m glad we have BNG. One of the more successful achievements of the Johnson Administration.

“Urgent need for housing in Cheshire East” yet within the past week, Wilmslow has had 2 plans submitted for care homes to be built on brownfield land. Yes, those sites are nowhere near as big, but does Cheshire East really need more care homes, especially as one is near completion a few hundred meters down the road from one of the newly submitted plans.

There isn’t an ‘urgent’ need for housing in Cheshire and certainly not on green belt land.

Why on green belt. What do the words green belt mean! Is there no brown fill that can be bought to make the town a tidier place. There’s certainly enough empty shops in town. Cheshire east are destroying our town

Macclesfield cannot possibly accommodate a further 200 homes unless the infrastructure is modified. Doctors in Macclesfield at the Medical Centre have written to various patients as they cannot cope with the volume of patients. The hospital is at breaking point, there is a real problem with all main services so how do you expect schools to cope, two main stream secondary schools have closed and had houses built on them. Before more houses are built and the cart is put before the horse there must be some sense with more infrastructure. It’s fine to keep building but we have a surplus already in Macclesfield so unless someone looks at the problem as mentioned to build more on Green Belt is not wanted and ridiculous.

It’s OK looking to build new houses but what about the logistics, new hospitals new school new doctors surgeries our roads are in a real mess. East Cheshire planners have not a clue of the needs of local people.

I totally disagree that we need more houses being built on the supposedly green belt of Macclesfield. Its an absolute disgrace. This was suppose to be protected land. When you travel to other areas of the country you don’t
see as many building sites!! The houses that are being thrown up in Macclesfield, Congleton and other areas of Cheshire is non stop. Soon we will be all joined up and become a city. All East Cheshire want is more money coming into their bank account to stave off bankruptcy. We haven’t got any infrastructure in place to support more houses being built. The hospital,doctors and dentists are already under such immense pressure. To say we aren’t ahead of target in the building program, I would like to see the figures as at one point we were way ahead and building doesn’t seem to have slowed down. If you need to build then use brown sites not greenbelt. Where does the wildlife go and what about reducing carbon emissions ?! Maybe we need to think seriously about the type of housing we live in. Could be the greater need for apartments.

Why don’t they use the empty Mills convert into flats get rid of ugly eyesore . Use the empty office buildings at Lyme green and Tytherington

Why is there an “urgent need” for more housing? Where is the demand coming from when we have a falling birth rate?

All people will get is YET more unaffordable Lego houses – roads with no pavements, tiny gardens fenced all around and plastic lawns, meeting their nature requirements with a few stick trees, No kindergarten community spaces, working spaces –

Honestly, I think it’s time that Place North West did some sense check articles so that we don’t get the same old gubbins trotted out for why you shouldn’t build houses:
BNG is a cluster feck of spreadsheets and multipliers that nobody can follow. If you want increased biodiversity start by having a word with UK farming practices given only c. 2% of the UK is actually built on. If you want to deal with it under Planning there are simpler ways, policies and SPDs, these already set out provisions for POS so pick any quantum you want but don’t moan about the acres that are needed.
Local Infrastructure – the NHS and education departments have the same access to population and housing need data as everybody else, so choices are being made. Landowners and developers often provide funding via S106. We are also all ageing, so ask yourself why those services are under pressure.
Ageing Popn – not only are they blocking up GP services, for every pensioner you need 3 working age tax payers to fund them. They need houses.
Green Belt – dates from 1947 when the Popn was 50M, it’s now 67M. Get rid of the policy protection, protect what genuinely needs protecting and Plan properly without the constraint. You can then have houses and accessible open space.

Thanks for the idea. We’ve flirted with doing a few articles explaining “affordable housing” in the past as well, seeing as that comes up time and time again as a point of confusion in our comment section.

December 09, 2024 at 11:40 am

By Julia Hatmaker

I live just off Prestbury Road, this is a very busy road, parking on the side roads is virtually impossible. Whether you drive along Prestbury Road passed the cemetery or along Westminster Road you are faced with heavy traffic. They built houses and flats on the old Kings School land which has added more pressure on the already busy roads. Not only are we losing more of our greenbelt land, old trees being pulled down, more cars on our roads affecting our health, something must be done to STOP HOMES BEING BUILT ON THIS LAND. Why do the people in power not consider the impact all these homes will do to our area.

This is profit driven and has nothing to do with actual need. We have new build terraced houses in Macc that are £370,000+ does anyone really believe this is driven by a housing crisis? Leave our green spaces alone and look to the brown-site locations. Settle for a hefty profit rather than a huge profit!

200 new homes with 200+ more cars and 400 and above more people. Brilliant. Just what this town doesn’t need. Have they actually visited Macclesfield town centre.

What a disgrace that East Cheshire should consider letting Bloor homes build yet more houses on green belt. That land has been used for agriculture. Cows and sheep graze there. It is cultivated by the farmer who rents the field. He annually collects the grass for winter feed and fertilises the ground. Sound agricultural practices to produce food to feed us. Why then is this land, that is useful to us, being turned into a housing estate, which only use is to provide more rates for Cheshire East? There is wildlife too in part of that land that would undoubtedly be disturbed and displaced by the event of the proposed building site and eventually by the human activity in the the housing. This land is a valuable asset for us as human beings not as yet another concrete housing development.

1. Consultation Issues: It appears many individuals who should have been consulted by Cheshire East Council (CEC) are missing from the list. A similar issue occurred in Henbury, where neighbouring properties were overlooked. 

2. Housing Needs Over 1,000 homes in Macclesfield have already been approved, yet remain unbuilt. The claim of a desperate housing shortage is therefore questionable. 

3. Planning Application Details: Some of the information in the outline planning application on the portal may seem more fitting for a work of fiction rather than a formal document. It’s important to scrutinise the details carefully. 

5. School Places: There are no available school places in the area to accommodate additional children from this development. 

6. Healthcare Access: There is no available capacity for additional GP or doctor’s appointments in the local healthcare services. 

7. CEC’s Planning Agenda: The Planning Manager at CEC is focused primarily on approving housing developments, so you’ll need to challenge everything. . 

8. Affordable Housing Be cautious of the claim that 50% of the homes will be affordable. In reality, only around 20% will meet that criterion, and those homes are unlikely to be made available on the open market, despite what the developers may advertise. 

9. Planning Conditions When planning conditions are imposed (such as restrictions on working hours), do not assume you will be notified—many residents may be left in the dark about such details. 

Get involved and make your voice heard. This is a critical time to act, and if you don’t, the consequences will be difficult to reverse once the developments are underway.

What is going on? The roads in this area are already congested especially around Cumberland Street and Sainsbury’s roundabout. Will Cheshire East not be satisfied until all green areas are built on. Are there plans in the pipeline to build more infrastructure eg schools, hospitals etc?? As a local resident I despair at the lack of planning going into granting permission for yet more houses in Macclesfield and it’s surrounding areas.

There are plenty of empty properties that could be renovated /repurposed instead of building on green belt land. A large majority of properties nowadays are be bought by folk who aren’t local who then rent them out at extortionate rents to locals. Affordable renting isn’t buy half rent half. Keep Macclesfield a nice place to live. When will Cheshire East look at mistakes that other councils have made and not repeat them. Congleton are building more than enough housing estates. Makes me wonder where all the tenants / homeowners lived before. Surely they weren’t all homeless? There’s loads being built in Sandbach. What happened to reducing our carbon footprint!