Can Cheshire East cope with Gladman?

An opinion piece

The startling news revealed exclusively yesterday on AudlemOnline that there has been a month-long delay in posting the Gladman plans for Little Heath on the Cheshire East website is cause for considerable concern.

The council's planners claim they were very busy and this caused the delay. Even worse, the plans could have been missed completely as they were filed in date order of receipt so, when posted on 25th June, they were hidden away amongst much earlier postings as they had been received by the council on 25th May.

Month lost

While the planners say local residents will have just as much time to register their views, for organisations like Audlem Parish Council, a full month has been lost when the hugely detailed plans could have been studied and work on their response could have been underway weeks ago. This is hardly treating parish councillors with due respect.

Given that the excuse coming from Cheshire East that they have been too busy is precisely the same as to why they have failed to produce a local plan in five years – the very reason we are in the mess that may allow Gladman to exploit planning law loopholes to get the bid through on appeal – it hardly fills local people with confidence.

Will Cheshire East provide a worthy opponent to the highly professional Gladman proposals backed by numerous professional consultants and their tightly argued case for development and affordable homes? The jury is very much out.

Ability, skill and determination

On what we have seen on this and a number of other issues, will Cheshire East's planners, lawyers, senior officers and councillors have the ability, skill and determination to handle this case so well that Gladman fail to exploit the normal loopholes and, for once, do not win on appeal? That's down to Cheshire East to prove and we very much hope they do so.

After all, earlier this year the council sent AudlemOnline a somewhat surprising press statement that they had now developed their local plan to such an extent that they will beat the speculative developers. We, and some readers, were unimpressed by that claim. The proof, as they say, is in the pudding and that pudding has just been served by Gladman's plans, albeit it spent a month before going on display.

The planners say they have been too busy to post the plans on their website. Not too busy, however, to pursue relentlessly at least one Audlem resident who, despite petitions and numerous letters in support, has been forced to part-demolish a beautiful wall. Maybe the council's priorities have been questionable too.

The way it was

As to taking five years to complete a Local Plan, AudlemOnline was handed yesterday a magnificent publication from 1947 called: County Palatine – a Plan for Cheshire.

Beautifully and wisely written, it was produced in double quick time by a small team immediately after the war and covered everything you can think of that needs to go into a plan: transport, health facilities, schools, industry and agriculture, population trends, land quality, employment trends and locations, technological changes etc etc.

Written well before every council desk housed at least one computer, it is a beautiful publication packed with colourful maps, photographs and a total absence of jargon, acronyms and all the current curses of official reports. It would be sobering reading for those planners who need more than five years to produce a plan for an area and population not much more than a third of the old Cheshire in 1947.

Too complex?

Perhaps the planning regime has simply become too complex with too much consultation and delay meaning that plans simply take too long to produce and, with national guidelines changing constantly, are always out of date, offering opportunities for speculative developers to exploit loopholes and achieve development exactly where a timely local plan would say there should be no development.

AudlemOnline will be following the Gladman v Cheshire East saga with close interest. And on what we have seen so far, Cheshire East have some catching up to do if they are going to win and reflect the vast majority of local views.

Bob Cartwright
Editor AudlemOnline

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