Dates set for Places for Everyone inquiry
The planning inspectorate will begin hearings regarding Greater Manchester’s regional masterplan in November.
The government body will hold live-streamed hearings on Places for Everyone through March 2023, providing around 25 individuals and organisations a chance to weigh in on the scheme.
Among those scheduled to speak include Gladman Developments, Home Builders Federation, Lichfields, Nexus Planning, Pegasus Group, and Stantec.
If the plan passes this hurdle – and succeeds in being adopted by local councils – it will go on to inform development in Bolton, Bury, Manchester, Oldham, Rochdale, Salford, Tameside, Trafford and Wigan through 2037. This includes outlining how the region will meet housing targets and maintain a five-year land supply of housing sites.
“We see Places for Everyone as the most effective plan to build good, affordable, net-zero homes, to support industrial innovation and good jobs, to protect and enhance our green spaces, and generate inward investment into our city-region,” said Greater Manchester Deputy Mayor Paul Dennett.
“It will enable us to continue delivering on our brownfield-first approach to development and meeting our housing targets, with support from the government’s Brownfield Housing Fund,” he continued.
“As we move forward, it’s vital that the Government continues to work with us to address these viability issues and deliver the types and tenures of housing that Greater Manchester needs. Never has this been more important than now, when the intersecting crises of housing, inflation, and rising fuel bills present real challenges for families and communities throughout our city region.”
It has been a bumpy ride thus far for Places for Everyone, which replaced the Greater Manchester Spatial Framework that had been proposed in 2016. GMSF had gone through three iterations before Stockport Council dropped out in December 2020, leading to the creation of Places for Everyone.
You can read the submitted Places for Everyone plans at greatermanchester-ca.gov.uk.
Places for Everyone! Like public parks, childrens playgrounds, riverside walks, garden allotments, recreation grounds, and all that communist stuff that our Victorian Lancastrian forebears wasted their own as well as taxpayers money on? Thank God those days are long gone.
By James Yates