Appeal fails on Highway grounds

Yesterday's news of a planning inspector's decision to block plans for a housing development in Congleton will interest many locally.

The decision showed that the Council had been right to refuse planning permission for up to 104 homes at Waggs Road on highways grounds.

After a three-day inquiry in October, inspector Olivia Spencer concluded that Belway Homes' proposals for Waggs Road would have an adverse effect on highway safety and rejected the appeal against refusal of permission for the new homes.

The previous December, the Council's strategic planning board had rejected the scheme saying the proposals would have a detrimental effect on Waggs Road.

Ms Spencer said: "The harm I have identified in respect of highway safety... would be in direct conflict with the objective of the social role of the planning system to support the well-being of the community."

She also added that, in the absence of appropriate mitigating measures, 'the detrimental effect of the development on the safety of highway users would, I consider, be severe'.

This will have campaigners against the Heathfield Road development wondering even more why Highways officers refused to back many Cheshire East councillors' view that Heathfield Road was completely unsuitable for development after their first site visit fifteen months ago.

Indeed, just last week, local councillor Rachel Bailey, tried unsuccessfully to have Hockenhull's plan refused on Highways grounds at the Strategic Planning Board's meeting to discuss the third, and this time successful, attempt to gain planning approval.

The attempt to re-introduce highways safety issues by Rachel Bailey and other councillors was refused on the advice of the council's lawyers but why, oh why, did the Highways department refuse to listen to councillors last year who had seen the narrow, winding, blind-cornered, pavement-less, school-hosting lane with poor access to Woore Road and dodgy access from the proposed site for 26 new dwellings.

And just as in the Congleton case, there were no possible 'mitigating circumstances' in Heathfield Road. The road could not have been widened and made suitable without seizing many front gardens.

Curiouser and curiouser, now we have heard of the Congleton case.

The appeal victory is the Council's second in as many weeks, following refusal of planning permission for a housing development at historic Grade II listed Dingle Farm, in Sandbach, on heritage grounds.

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