Cheshire East approves housing sites
Cheshire East Council has rubber-stamped its official five-year housing land supply in an attempt to "protect countryside against unsustainable unwelcome speculative developers who are driven to build new houses purely for profit."
Cllr David Brown, deputy leader of the council, said: "What an achievement for the council. I would like to thank all the hard-working officers in our planning team who have worked incredibly hard to achieve this over the last few months. We are now in a fantastic position to tackle the issue of unplanned, unwanted and unsustainable development.
"The five-year housing supply should allow our towns to grow in a planned and sustainable way and will allow us to continue to finalise the Local Plan document."
The housing sites identified in the Strategic Housing Land Availability Assessment were approved by Cheshire East's strategic planning board. The SHLAA and specifically identifying five years' supply of deliverable housing sites is required under the National Planning Policy Framework as a key piece of evidence to support the council's housing policies. Several aggressive house builders have succeeded in winning planning consent on appeal despite initial rejections at local level.
Cheshire East will now need to review this document annually to ensure that the list of potential sites is kept updated and the Local Plan is sound according to the NPPF. The review will begin in April with a call for sites.
Cllr Brown added: "This latest SHLAA update highlights the significant work that Cheshire East Council has undertaken in identifying a five-year housing supply in the borough; the town strategies, the development strategy and the policy principles documents all being consulted upon within the last year.
"This now enables us to begin addressing the Housing Growth Policy, based around existing towns, to meet local demand and ensure we meet our five year housing supply target of 6,510 homes over the next five years."
- More details are available on the council's website here
Well done to Cheshire East for managing to reintroduce a new housing moritorium so quickly. We dont want those nasty developers making anything so heinous as profit…
By Paul
I think the initial quote about developers and profit staggering and reflects just how out of tune CEC is with the real world.
By Anonymous
Are we to assume that they are still wanting to dump all their housing requirement in Crewe?
By Anonymous
Shocking breaking news – private sector house builders aren’t charities! How dare developers make a profit? What do they think they are, businesses? They should be working for free, along with architects, engineers, surveyors, etc. Also, might be an idea to put the approved document on the Council’s website. You never know, evil developers might want to have a look…
By unfortunately a resident
Cheshire East Council supports charitable and not-for-profit developers. The rest, can do one!
By Chorltonian
Badly worded but I understand where the Council is coming from. House builder short-termism drives them to develop poor quality housing in unsustainable locations, putting profit motive above more socially, economically and environmentally responsible forms of development. The market, in short, is dysfunctional and serves the interests of shareholders and directors much better than it does society.
By Reform the Industry
….so does the fizzy drinks industry, but we don’t get local councils interfering with it.
By Spuds MacKenzie