Cheshire East explores CPO for Crewe road scheme
The council is seeking permission to use compulsory purchase orders to acquire 56 acres of land to bring forward the North West Crewe package, a £36.5m infrastructure project to open up development sites for 1,350 homes.
Cheshire East Council’s cabinet is to study a report from its planners that moots several CPOs to acquire a total of 39 plots of land needed to bring forward the scheme, should agreements with individual landowners not be possible.
However, the report states that CPOs would only be used as a “last resort”.
“[The] council needs to ensure it has the ability to use [CPOs] if it considers that it may not be possible to agree official terms for the acquisition of all the remaining interests in the land required to facilitate construction of the scheme,” the report said.
North West Crewe package includes a north-south spine road from Crewe up towards the Greater Manchester connurbation, including the construction of a new A530 road linking Smithy Lane, Minshull New Road and Middlewich Road
It also proposes the realignment of Smithy Lane, an east-west link road from the A530 to the spine road and a series of junction improvements.
The roads are intended to open up two sites earmarked for homes. These are, Leighton West, which is earmarked to provide 850 homes, and Leighton, to provide a further 500.
The two sites are known on the Cheshire East Local Plan as Sites 4 and 5. Some 400 of the homes are to be delivered by Torus in partnership with Mulbury.
The current programme is for the main works to start in early 2021, with an estimated 24-month construction period and negotiations with more than 125 landowners are ongoing.
Cheshire East cabinet is to discuss the plans at its meeting on 5 May.