Bury and Rochdale to pool planning resources

The councils are looking to set up a joint planning committee to consider planning applications within the 1,600-acre Northern Gateway, where 13m sq ft of employment space and 1,200 homes are projected.

Bury’s planning control committee on Tuesday 22 April will be presented with a report outlining draft arrangement for the joint committee as the councils look to press on with a project seen as vital if Greater Manchester is to address its north-south economic imbalance.

Northern Gateway is the fulcrum of the wider Atom Valley proposal. A supplementary planning document to set a context for development in the area was rubber-stamped in early March.

Atom Valley as a whole is being promoted as a mayoral development zone, with plans in motion to establish a Mayoral Development Corporation in partnership between the Greater Manchester Combined Authority and the two councils.

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Both local authorities would put members forward to sit on the area-specific committee, with each council putting forward a chair. In each project’s case, the chair would then be allocated as the candidate from whichever council has the largest amount of land in that specific scheme.

Planning applications elsewhere in the boroughs would continue to be considered by purely local committees.

The advantage of the joint committee plan is spelled out as being that only one report would need to be prepared for committee, and only one hearing required – although legally, each council would have to independently publish a decision notice.

The alternative is for the councils to consider things separately. As an example, a similar arrangement is in place at Sunderland and South Tyneside, where the International Advanced Manufacturing Park straddles county lines, and although the process works well enough there, a more streamlined approach is preferred here.

The Places for Everyone GM-wide development sets out two Northern Gateway sites, the employment-led space at Heywood/Pilsworth, and the primarily residential allocation at Simister/Bowlee.