‘Powerless’ Stockport publishes draft local plan with 26 Green Belt sites
Planners across the region have got a busy weekend of reading ahead of them. The much-anticipated, 219-page spatial strategy for the borough has been aired for the very first time ahead of consultation beginning in the coming weeks.
Stockport’s draft local plan sets out where employment development and housing will be delivered over the period up to 2042.
Due to the government almost doubling Stockport’s annual housing target last year, the council has been forced to release 26 sites from the Green Belt. Any schemes delivered on these sites would have to deliver 50% affordable provision the draft states.
A full list of sites to be released from the Green Belt can be found on 110 and 111 of the draft.
In total, these sites could deliver 8,965 homes across the plan period, more than half of the council’s overall supply, which the draft plan sets out is 16,400. In total, there is a need for 31,790 homes over the plan period.
Before the increase in housing targets, Lib Dem-run Stockport had been adamant its local plan would not feature any Green Belt release and that it had adequate brownfield sites to deliver its targets.
However, the shifting national policy picture has rendered this dream unachievable.
“It is with a heavy heart [that] legally we have had to accept the government’s mandate and authority to direct us to deliver a part of the national housing target it has set, requiring the delivery of almost twice as many homes within Stockport,” Cllr Mark Roberts’ foreword says.
“This has forced us to release Green Belt sites using the government’s new methodology.”
Roberts also bemoaned the government’s decision to introduce the idea of Grey Belt – a designation for land previously earmarked as Green Belt that is aimed at freeing up more sites for development.
“Many of the sites included in this draft local plan should not need to be released for development,” the leader writes.
“We vehemently disagree with this approach, but we are powerless to stop it. We accept our duty to show leadership and comply with our legal obligations.”
Stockport’s local plan process has been under increased scrutiny since the council pulled out of the joint spatial plan for Greater Manchester in 2020 amid concerns about Green Belt release.
The authority restarted its local plan process last year after pausing it to due to national uncertainty about policy direction.
The council said it wanted to wait until the outcome of the consultation on the NPPF and for more certainty about emerging Green Belt policy before publishing a draft local plan.
These delays prompted a telling off from housing minister Matthew Pennycook in September who told the council to get on with it.
Cllr Mark Roberts, Leader of Stockport Council, said: “Stockport’s draft local plan has now been published and will shortly be considered by members of Housing, Economy and Environment Scrutiny when they meet next Friday before proceeding to an Extraordinary meeting of the cabinet on 27 October.
“This plan has been many years in the making and the council has progressed at pace to make changes to the local plan which it intended to consult on in July 2024 to reflect the significant changes introduced by the revised National Planning Policy Framework in December 2025.
“We wanted to a plan which focused on unlocking further brownfield, development, but due to the significant increase in the number of houses we need to deliver, we simply could not do this through the use of brownfield sites in the urban area alone.
“The plan includes Green Belt release but this is focused mainly on previously developed land and ‘grey belt’ sites identified under the government’s new framework.”
