Stockport housing plans pile up
A combined 60 acres in Bramhall and High Lane could deliver 345 homes under plans being progressed by Wain Estates and Persimmon.
In High Lane, Persimmon is drawing up proposals for up to 250 homes on the 30 acres off Windlehurst Road.
The site is divided in two by a footpath that leads to the grade two-listed Bancroft’s Bridge, which crosses the Macclesfield Canal, and is designated as grade three agricultural land.
Pegasus is advising Persimmon on the plans, which can be viewed by searching for reference number DC/097770 on Stockport Council’s planning portal.
In Bramhall, Wain Estates is readying plans for up to 195 homes on a 30-acre Green Belt site off Lytham Drive.
The scheme would be constructed on land currently previously used as a stables and the by the former Reddish Wood Nursery.
Half of the homes would be available on affordable tenures. Emery Planning is advising on the plans, which can be viewed by searching for reference number DC/097614 on Stockport Council’s planning portal.
The Lytham Drive development is located next door to another site that Wain Estates recently sold to Rowland Homes with planning permission for 60 homes.
To the north of the site, several more housing schemes are proposed from the likes of Bellway, Taylor Wimpey, and Russell Homes.
Stockport Council is currently under pressure to approve housing applications as it does not have an updated local plan and cannot demonstrate a five-year housing land supply.
Work to refresh the local plan is ongoing and a consultation is currently underway.
None of the libdem/Tory councillors that created this mess can say they weren’t warned.
By Pete
I’d love to know what Persimmon’s plans are to make their site in High Lane sustainably accessible, so that people have the genuine choice of transport modes required by the NPPF. It’s served by 6 buses a day each way between Stepping Hill Hospital and Glossop – that’s one each way every 2 hours with nothing after 6pm and nothing at weekends. Alternatively you’ve about a 15-20 minute walk to the A6 where there is one bus an hour between Buxton and the airport via Stockport. Or a half hour walk down unsurfaced, unlit paths to the one train every 2 hours at best at Middlewood station. Nobody living here would be able to do so without relying on a car for their main mode of transport.
By Anonymous
Anon – Persimmon don’t need to make their site accessible – as long as the traffic impacts are not ‘severe’ – this has been national policy for 14 y. It’s clearly going to be car-dependent. If course if Stockport Council had produced a plan instead of playing politics, they could have directed development to more accessible areas. But they chose not to.
By Pete
Pete – para 110 of the NPPF requires that ‘Significant development should be focused on locations which are or can be made sustainable, through limiting the need to travel and offering a genuine choice of transport modes’. That’s separate and different from para 116s requirement that residual cumulative impacts on the road network, following mitigation, should not be severe. You could mitigate the impacts on the road network and meet the requirements of para 116 by building a 20 lane motorway but that wouldn’t meet para 110s requirement to offer a genuine choice of transport modes (ignoring that new road space just attracts more traffic, so eventually your 20 lanes would be full)
By Anonymous
Pete, you are correct the Lib Dems and Tories were warned and they chose to indulge in short term political point scoring at the expense of doing the right thing. I live in Stockport and recently challenged my Lib Dem MP about this mess. Predictably my MP blamed central government and came up with some feeble excuse for not having a local plan in place. Due to the councillors mismanagement Stockport is now the wild west for property developers.
By Anonymous
I’ve been very positive about recent developments in Stockport but we need to preserve our green space.
By Pablo