Cheadle and Gatley Lib Dems are moving
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by Lib Dem team on 6 January, 2015
A new planning application has been submitted for the development of the Barnes Hospital site, with 38 apartments to go into the hospital building itself and a further 117 new houses around it.
This is a substantial reduction on the 300 homes previously proposed in the planning application granted a couple of years ago.
Overall the aim is to save the historic Barnes Hospital building from getting beyond the point of repair, but to make any scheme stack up financially, “enabling development” – the houses – is needed around it.
You can have your say on both planning applications: 57381 and 57383.
Here is the development proposal document from the developers:
11 Comments
will there be any affordable first time buyers homes or apartments in this development?
Will the plan be brought to GATLEY VP meeting 13 January?
Hi Art – I don’t know the details on those. The previous application had far more apartments, and I understand the move to houses is because apartments aren’t a strong market in this area. The level of affordable homes would be worked out through the planning process. I’m not aware of it being on the agenda for 13 January. I’m happy to talk about it, but need to stay neutral on the application – I don’t have any more information that is in the planning application and the developer’s proposal dcument.
Iain,
Where is the plan for the alterations to the Kingsway road – is it in 57381 and if so which one?
Should be in 57381 – not got time to track it down now, but there’s a diagram showing the A34 junction on http://interactive.stockport.gov.uk/edrms/onlinemvm/getimage.asp?DocumentNumber=230102
Absolute madness – in Cheadle & Gatley we need more recreational & green space and fewer sources of traffic congestion! The A34 & local roads will inevitably clog even thicker. The argument that it preserves a historical building is hollow – full of modern apartments it is false preservation, but very profitable. It would be interesting but unlikely to be revealed just who profits!
David – I don’t think it’s any secret: the development partners will profit (assuming it goes to plan) and the council knows how much profit they’ll make. It’s a commercial development and the people taking the risk will want to get a fair reward.
I disagree about the Barnes Hospital – buildings change use all the time and there’s simply no way to preserve it without finding a modern, economically viable use.
We’re lucky around here to have so much green recreational space, but this development will open up more for public use – areas currently fenced off will be open.
On housing, the reality is that more houses are needed right across the country. I want my children to be able to have somewhere to live, and that means redressing the supply and demand imbalance in housing. The question isn’t whether we should have more houses – we don’t really have any choice in that – it’s how we manage it and where they should go.
Iain – you say we need more houses so why do you object to the proposal for more houses being built near Handforth (nothing to do with the fact that it is a Tory council?) Mark Hunter has even organised a petition against the development and called them greedy. And why didn’t he do the same for the proposed Woodford development? Not biased is he? Stockport not greedy?
Regarding the application for Barnes I notice that there will be 250 car spaces. That junction is going to get really busy in the morning.
There’s a one word answer to why this doesn’t make sense; traffic. That’s why there are objections to the A34 development; that’s why there should be the same objections to this development. In the case of the A34 plan its less political, more common sense. Cheshire east build their houses then ‘dump’ their traffic on SMBC via the A34.
In the case of Barnes hospital, its an island. Exit via the A34 means southbound only which will make the Gatley junction even more stupid than it is now. Exit onto Manchester Rd? Well, it just wouldn’t cope. ANY development these days should come with an automatic prerequisite for the provision off public transport links. In the case of Barnes it would be a golden opportunity to effect the first tram section in smbc.
Bruce – happy to go over that again.
We are not objecting to building more houses. Cheshire East needs more just as Stockport, Manchester and everywhere else across the country does. We have two objections to the Cheshire plan.
1. If you want to build on greenbelt, you should have considered the other options first. Cheshire East did it the other way round: they started off deciding they wanted to put 2,000 houses on fields near Handforth on the Stockport border and then sought to justify it afterwards. They did not look seriously at other options across the county, including brownfield sites.
2. All developments generate more journeys: new people, new jobs. That’s no bad thing if we want to live in a prosperous area – it comes with the package. We do need to deal with that traffic though. By putting large numbers of houses all in one place right on the A34, Cheshire East will generate a lot more traffic along the road coming right into Cheadle & Gatley. If they had a plan to deal with that – to show what they were going to do to deal with the extra traffic – it might be different. At the moment they have no such plan. They don’t know how to deal with those extra journeys, how much it would cost or even if it’s possible.
The Government’s own planning inspector agreed with our concerns and pushed back Cheshire East’s plan. We expect Cheshire East to come back with a revised plan in the next few months.
Iain
You have still not answered my question about Woodford – why has Mark Hunter not organised an online petition?
Bruce – Mark opposed the scale of development at Woodford and has been very public on that. There are many different ways to campaign on an issue and it’s certainly true that the Lib Dems don’t run identical campaigns on different issues.
It’s a very different situation of course: Woodford is developed site (with the aerodrome) and the question there was not whether it should be re-developed but what should go there: whether it should be all housing or a mix of housing and industry.