Cheadle and Gatley Lib Dems are moving
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by Lib Dem team on 25 April, 2014
Cheshire East are currently consulting on their local plan. In Stockport we have some concerns and there are a number of issues we feel will need to be addressed, not least around greenbelt release and the pressure on the A34 if they go ahead with the proposal to build 1800+ new houses at Handforth East.
10 Comments
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It should be obvious that, quite apart from the green belt aspect, the A34 junction at Cheadle cannot take any more traffic of the volume indicated by a New housing development.Therefore, even if the case for green belt usage is eventually made, a more radical planning approach should be adopted.
That the development might be built without any access to the A34 corridor and would only be built if a fully integrated public transport solution was also built at the same time.
We have to get real about traffic volumes in this area Nd its not good enough for Cheshire East to dump their traffic problems onto SMBC.
Woodford Village 2500 new houses – approved by the perfect and incredibly efficient (don’t mention highest council tax) Stockport metropolitan Borough Council (run by the Lib Dems)
Handford East 1800+ new houses – proposed by the evil “Cheshire Tories” (quote from Mark Hunter)of Cheshire East (run by the conservatives).
So whats the difference?
Hi Frederick,
Happy to put the record straight on that one.
There are three very big differences.
1. Woodford is 850 houses, not 2500!
2. The proposal for Woodford takes account of the traffic impact – the Handforth proposal doesn’t.
3. Woodford is developing on previously developed land (the former BAE site), Handforth is developing on greenbelt land.
There are a few other differences, but that would get us deeper into national planning law so I’ll leave it there for now!
In general I agree with Alan’s comments. Has Stockport council submitted a formal request for a traffic impact study to be undertaken ?
Secondly I find the first comment most interesting. The contributor has chosen to remain anomymous and sent in his comment on Friday evening, yet the email to the rest of us was not sent until Sunday morning. He or she had prior knowledge of this item in the newletter it seems. Maybe one of the East Cheshire councilors ?
Hi John,
Yes to the request – if you look at the appendix to the document you’ll see the minutes of a meeting I attended in Sandbach nearly a year ago and formally made that request – and it’s been repeated many times since.
Although my newsletter goes out on Sundays I publish the stories on my blog during the week so anyone can visit my website and see the stories early.
In answer to Johns comment the report was posted on twitter by Cheshire East Exposed who saw it on Iains blog and thats where I saw it so no inside lnowledge. I can confirm that I am not a councillor but a local resident of cheshire east appalled by my council’s behaviour
I just want to know what will be the impact of this on us here in Gatley, Heald Green and Cheadle. Is that too much to ask? Fed up with all the ranting, side comments and such that keep appearing on here. Mr Gray
Mr Gray: the main impact for us would be a significant increase in traffic down the A34, leading to even longer queues at the Kingsway/Gatley Road junction.
The reason Cheshire East give for the location is that most of the jobs are in Manchester, and the direct route from the Handforth East location to Manchester is along the A34.
That’s the number one issue I’ve raised with Cheshire East over the last year – any development of that sort of scale needs to be accompanied by a proper study into traffic impact and mitigation of the increased traffic. If mitigation isn’t possible, the development should not happen.
Thanks for opposing this. Greenbelt and the A34 shouldn’t be taking such a hit.
As happened last night it doesn’t seem to take much to cause gridlock that could kill. Any medical emergency on Gatley’s Lakes estate would have been made drastically worse by that.