Cheshire East approves 1,500-home Handforth Garden Village
After a three-and-a-half-hour discussion, the council’s planning committee voted to grant consent for the 300-acre masterplan.
Engine of the North, the Cheshire East Council’s development company, is leading on the Handforth Garden Village proposals.
The development proposes the creation of 1,500 homes and around 245,000 sq ft of employment space.
The scheme also features a primary and secondary school, sports facilities, 175 elderly care residential units, a village hall, and space for self-build homes.
The plans also contain 116 acres of open space and just under 30 acres of employment land.
The development is one of 14 garden village projects selected by the Government in 2017 to boost housing numbers across the country. Others in the North West include Halsnead in Knowsley, Cuerdale in South Ribble, St Cuthberts in Carlisle, and Godley Green in Tameside.
Plans for Handforth Garden Village, to be developed on land east of Ainslie Way and south of the Manchester Airport Eastern Link Road, were first lodged in May 2019.
Approval was granted subject to securing more than £30m of Section 106 contributions from the developer towards local highways, education and healthcare.
Councillors also secured a planning condition that states the speed limit across the site would be 20mph.
Engine of the North has secured outline consent for the built elements of the scheme and full consent for preliminary infrastructure works to prepare the site for redevelopment.
To learn more about the proposals, search for application reference number 19/0623M on Cheshire East Council’s planning portal.
Frost Planning, IBI, E*Scape Urbanists and PGA Landscape Architecture make up the project team.
Traffic chaos!!! An extra 3000 extra cars entering and leaving the bypass . Absolutely awful !
By susan kershaw
Shame Cheshire East can’t get anything else to committee. Their planning department is a farce at the moment. Applications are just not progressing and emails ignored. Shameful.
By MJ
When will we get a bypass to bypass the bypass? Whilst I approve the development in principle, there is a danger of future congestion reducing the performance of the bypass to that of the old A34 through Handforth.
By Anonymous
Great news! Quality family homes, exactly what the country needs!
By MC
MJ, it has taken them nearly 4 years to get this to committee so they can hardly be accused of prioritising it!
By Anonymous
Traffic is not inevitable if cycling and public transport are properly provided for (which I suspect they aren’t)
By Urbanist
Here’s hoping they will be actual affordable homes for the average worker then, ie no more than £250k. What’s that? Highly unlikely? You mean it’s more about profit for the developers and their shareholders rather than building ‘badly needed’ homes. Yeah , that’s what I though….
By Anonymous
MC – “quality” homes you say? What makes you think volume house builders are capable of delivering quality family homes?
By Anonymous
Outrageous they can label the demolition of the country side ‘environmentally friendly’
By Anonymous
I’ve had a good study of the Handforth Garden Village proposals and actually it’s a generally good scheme with well thought out walking and cycle route and what looks like a high street. Mix of tenures too.
If countryside has to disappear, better this type of proposal than just sprawl. People have got to live somewhere and, whilst I’m brown field first, there are limits.
By SW