Ryebank Fields dissenters lodge protest plans

People and groups like this are why the UK has stagnated economically. When it’s a huge challenge just to get 120 homes built, it’s time for reform. We need a system which sidelines NIMBY luddites and considers housing as critical infrastructure – which it is. Streamline the planning system to trigger a building boom – solve homelessness, the housing crisis, and stimulate the economy in one swoop.

I’m backing the Step Places and Southway Housing proposals – they deliver much needed homes in Chorlton. It is not as if there is a shortage of amenity / green space in the area as the PNW photograph clearly shows. Get it built!

Come on Manchester City Council get the application for the submitted scheme approved – “build, baby, build”.

I don’t get this at all. There’s a huge park next to the site and Turn Moss a stone’s throw away. Aging (and rich) crustys with too much time on their hands.

I see the ‘applicant’ is claiming to have consulted on it’s plans, yet they seem to have skilfully avoided doing so in a way that anyone with opposing views might be able to input. Nothing on social media, no leaflet drop. nothing. Clearly a sham consultation that only sought views from the small group of pro-homelessness campaigners that make-up their self-interest group. I think a 100% Passivaus, 35% affordable scheme on an asbestos-ridden landfill site would be truly outstanding and be of huge benefit to the wider community.

And this is supposed to be a clever idea how?
Presumably any advice the nimbys sought was from top planning consultant Dr Google? Perhaps worth making very clear indeed that the professionals mentioned at the end are working on the very good scheme from Step Places/Southway, who have gone out of their way to listen to the wider community, and not this nonsense.

It’s unconscionable that people are willing to defend their equity this hard.

We are in a housing crisis also, Rhetta.

Excellent photo showing just how much green space there is in that area. Get the development built.

I know this is a pro-development site, but you cannot build absolutely everywhere. The term NIMBY is offensive, insomuch that those trying to protect habitats etcetera are not all BANANAS as David Cameron termed them, but acknowledge the benefits to mental health that green spaces give. It’s not all about self-interest, but balancing the greater good – should that be housing where it is needed the most, or preserving green lungs and farmland.

We are not in a housing crisis, birth rates have been down for years and the boomers won’t be around for ever

PLF_Cloud_Cuckoo_Land – Please look at the acres of green space around this site which is all publicly accessible.

Get the Step Places scheme approved and built.

I assume the promoters of the alternative application will put their own houses and savings on the table to insure the liabilities associated with this site !!!

3.10am – sorry you are way of the mark. In Manchester the population is continuing to grow so there is a very significant need for more homes and more affordable homes. The scheme in for planning delivers those requirements. So MCC get that scheme approved.

The recent findings and professional reports leading to the need for this Alternative Planning Application considers the impact upon the health, safety and needs of thousands of Manchester and Trafford residents and the history and heritage and necessity for unmanicured nature in our cities, whereas the property developers plans for an executive housing estate (with a potentially few ‘affordable’ properties) do not. There are plenty of brownfield sites available for this kind of build, there’s no need to destroy this green space. All the up to date reports and information can be viewed here: https://ryebankfieldscommunity.co.uk/

HATE this one, from a development lover. We need more green spaces, not less.

Southway/StepPlaces/MMU why have 3 Statutory Consultees raised significant objections to your planning application 142223/FO/2025 for 120 homes on this land? United Utilities, Environment Agency & GMEU.

Is the Rhetta Moran quoted here the same one quoted extensively in the local media recently about the pressing housing needs of potentially vulnerable people who have recently arrived in Manchester seeking asylum?
However admirable this concern may be, it doesn’t sit very well with running a campaign to keep the potentially vulnerable (and poor) away from Chorlton. Or even recognises that being a very welcoming city does have a bit of an impact on housing demand generally…

Well done to Ryebank Fields campaigners for standing up to the hypocritical plans put forward by Step Places and Southway Housing on behalf of Manchester Metroplolitan University who were gifted Ryebank Fields under covenant for use for education purposes and are (not for the first time) seeking to profiteer from the transfer of public land. MCC’s Strategic Housing Land Availability Assessment demonstrates (and has done for many years) that there is a surplus of brownfield land available for development. Ryebank Fields is a rewilded and naturally biodiverse (officially classified as) greenfield site and therefore should NOT be sacrificed. Noone is denying there is a housing crisis, but there are more suitable sites available. The multitudinous high rise apartments being built across our city only exacerbate this crisis, benefitting overseas investors ahead of those in need of real housing.

@September 12, 2025 at 5:47 pm
By Lynn Sedge

After some searching on the web, very very possibly. Chorlton is not called the ‘Islington of the North’ for nothing.

Chorlton nimby whingers at it again. It’s a landfill site, if this doesn’t get planning consent nothing will. MCC have to stand up to the Chorlton nimby whingers and get these houses built.

Utter nimbys, this is purely about entitlement. There’s been many other green areas and schemes where their energy could have been directed. But let’s not hide what this is, is middleclass entitlement

PNW – thank you for providing the relevant planning application reference.

Having read the Applicant’s Planning Statement, which is part of the suite of documents in their application, what has amazed me is the length of time it has taken for an application for just 120 homes to be deposited. Over 10 years.

One can only conclude that those opposing any development on this land have sought to make the application process as difficult as possible.

From my reading of the Planning Statement – it will be approved.

My concern – I hope MCC take every step possible to minimise the risk of a Judicial Review materialising from those opposing a scheme that clearly much needed in Chorlton.

My only criticism is why only 120 homes? We are crying out for new homes in this area and with all that public open space adjacent, surely we can do better than that

The curious case of Ryebank Fields… the ‘rewilded’ waste ground that’s set to be of benefit to so many in these times of much needed new homes, whilst catering for people of all circumstances. It’s beyond me how anyone would be against the remediation of this old brick factory, latterly tip – which will go onto benefit the many, not just a vocal few and their audacious planning application.

I doubt that the applicant and her supporters would have objected to the development of the houses she/they live in, built on green fields not so long ago. Imagine if these people existed in the late 19th and early 20th century. We’d all be living in basement slums! Such a myopic and selfish act by a few privileged NIMBYs.

Manchester has double the amount of Brownfield land needed to meet housing targets. This former landfill, remediated in the 1970s under Operation Eyesore, is one of the few real nature spaces in the City. Thousands of people from Stretford, Old Trafford, Gorse Hill Whalley Range and Chorlton love and visit this place – it’s important enough to the communities around it to qualify for consideration for Local Green Space status (you can read more here) Thousands of homes are being built in the vicinity over the next ten years, this campaign is about valuing nature as a vital part of urban planning. Brownfield first and nature recovery are national urban planning priorities. If not here then where? https://www.saveryebankfields.co.uk/localgreenspace/

As GM continues to grow it’s a matter of basic fairness that suburban areas also thicken up alongside brownfield density, otherwise brownfield first ends up being a way for one set of people to live in low density, drive a car and have field behind their house because other people are required to live in high density, without a car with less access to greenspace.

It’s critical to note that the existence of sites on brownfield land registers very obviously does not automatically mean that such sites are suitable, viable or available for housing development. Of course, it is deeply misleading (and self-serving in relation to this NIMBY group) to suggest they alone can meeting housing needs.

If these houses are not built here then where else? It should be affordable housing as well – Chorlton is far too expensive for normal people so this is an opportunity for much cheaper housing.

I am pro development and an RICS development professional, but I’m not pro development on this site.
There is a lot of misinformation and misunderstanding in the comments here. I know what its like, read the article, like it or get annoyed and post comments.
But the often written points about need more housing, tired get it built, nimbyism, and there is enough greenspace isn’t quite correct and misses the points here.
There is sufficient brownfield land to meet Manchester’s housing targets as has been mentioned. We all know its brownfield first and there are grants to assist that. The greenspace here at Ryebank Fields is completely different to the formal, managed, kept green space of Longford Park. The park is not natural greenspace, its managed and it its not a great wildlife habitat. Ryebank Fields are a highly valuable, rare, re-naturalised wildlife habitat. There are lots of plant and animal species here and its incredibly rare ecosystem and habitat. Its too lazy to look at it on the google aerial and say its green like next door. Its not, its very different and should be protected. This is a great application to protect it. When you visit the place you realise how unique and special it is. I suspect most negative comments have not visited it.

The amount of entitlement within these comments is beyond boring…equal to the amount of people who have no understanding about how development works in general and how difficult it is to get anything built.

‘We need homes, just don’t build them anywhere near me please’. I’m an environmentally conscious, vegan eating, tee-total, polar bear hugger…and I have no understanding for how difficult it is, especially in the north where the skills/trades are lacking, to deliver a Passivhaus scheme and a development that stacks up with a third of housing being affordable. Everyone has had the opportunity to attend the public consultation, nothing has been done in secret…you just missed it because you were at Barry’s Boot Camp followed by a steak dinner and White Wine Spritzer…sshhh…don’t tell my vegan friends! Bore off and move on or educate yourself.