Little Heath Inquiry: Day Three

Day Three of the Inquiry into the Little Heath appeal by Gladman Developments to build 120 houses continued yesterday at the Alexandra Suite at Crewe's Football Stadium.

The focus on Thursday was on the Cheshire East Local Plan and Five year Housing Delivery Programme.

Yesterday, the focus switched to:

• The reasons for Cheshire East recommending planning refusal
• A statement of support for the Audlem community from local MP, Stephen O'Brien
• A statement from Geoff Seddon outlining the Audlem Parish Council's reasons for formally objectiing to the planning application.

Council for Cheshire East started by asking Ben Haywood to outline the Council's reasons for refusal. He responded by saying that:

• The proposal would destroy Open Countryside and prime grade 2/3a agricultural land.
• It did not pass the Sustainability test
• it was not required as part of the Housing Delivery Programme

The Gladman response was to question whether the plans involved had "time expired"

A statement was then read out from from Right Hon. Stephen O'Brien by his Constituency representative David Caid in which he stated his full agreement with Cheshire East and Audlem Parish Council in their objections to the application.

He outlined his objections to be on the basis of:

• Prematurity
• Emerging law
• Emerging Local plans
• Expensive increase in infrastructure

Finally Geoff Seddon from Audlem Parish Council gave a strong defence of the village's objections, outlining the destruction of open countryside, the massive increase in Audlem's population, the development not being consistent with Audlem's housing needs and an unacceptable increase in infrastructure and traffic.

Geoff Seddon's statement is available by clicking the pdf file enclosed. For readers' ease, we have not included the extensive Appendices referred to in Geoff's statement. Stephen O'Brien's letter is in a separate story today.

After three days of hard battling, it was a relief to all when a truce was called at 3.00pm as several leading participants envisaged a Friday evening of similar pressure on the M6.

The Inquiry resumes on Tuesday next week at 9.30am in the Carlsberg Suite with an informal round table discussion, which includes Geoff Seddon, to iron out issues relating to expert witnesses and their evidence before switching back to the formal Inquiry format.

This article is from our news archive. As a result pictures or videos originally associated with it may have been removed and some of the content may no longer be accurate or relevant.