Heathfield Road planning thoughts

Yesterday*, we published the news of Cheshire East's Strategic Planning Board's approval of the plan to build 26 homes off Heathfield Road – despite councillors twice previously having rejected the plan unanimously.

It would be easy to slam the developer, Frank Hockenhull, for exploiting the planning system and getting his plan through at the third time of asking, having also been turned down ten years ago by a Planning Inspector.

It would also be easy to slam the councillors who voted this through despite their treating this application almost as a joke previously. It has to be said, however, some councillors seemed determined to fight the proposal despite the advice from their professional planners and the council's legal representative on Wednesday.

It would be even easier to slam the way in which the professional planners in Cheshire East have caved in. They seemed yesterday like people beaten into submission by the failure of their 5-Year Housing Supply to get approval from the Planning Inspectorate. The white flag was there for all to see.

And it is even more tempting to slam the Highways officers who refused – and it seemed perverse to the councillors at the time – to allow highway safety issues to be a reason for turning this application down a year ago when the Strategic Planning Board first dismissed it.

After all, councillors who visited the site last Friday still felt Heathfield Road to be unsafe and unfit for further development. But the planning system prevented those concerns being reintroduced against the advice of highways officers.

And, most of all, it's tempting to slam Cheshire East, its leaders and its planners, for failing to produce an acceptable Local Plan and 5-Year housing supply figure in the four years they have had to do so. It's that failure, after all, that has undermined virtually all the defences against unwanted development.

And finally, we can blame the Planning Inspectorate who dismiss Cheshire East's figures for housing need and supply but, we were told yesterday, refuse to say what they think the figure should be – if they can, indeed, guess any better than the local authority!

Yes, all the above are culpable, but none as seriously as our masters at Westminster who created this fiasco of a planning system which is now being exploited by the likes of the rapacious David Gladman and more local developers like Frank Hockenhull.

Admittedly, if we owned land, it would be very tempting for many of us to seize the opportunity to make a lot of money. But is this the way to develop our built environment?

Yes, Audlem needs more houses, but, assuming the Gladman Little Heath plan is passed – and after hearing yesterday's debate it's hard to imagine it won't be – that's 146 new homes coming soon. Add to that the sensible infill homes in the pipeline, the resultant number is twice as many in a few years as Cheshire East's Local Plan envisaged in the next twenty years!

It's clearly a nonsense and it will be no surprise if we end up like Spain and Ireland, full of unfinished estates, particularly as the developers will build largish properties when it's so called affordable homes that are most needed.

One Strategic Board councillor said yesterday: "All five of Cheshire East's MPs should be brought to this Board to explain the mess that they have put us in."

To which another retorted: "They will say they have every sympathy with the position we are in; which is why we have done now't!"

We had the Localism Act. That seems to mean, judging by the current planning system, simply ignoring local opinion and letting the likes of Gladman do what they wish. Gladman can even over-ride the opinion of a democratically elected councils, it seems.

The previous planning minister, Nick Bowles, seems to be the man who created this mess before going off elsewhere in government leaving someone else to explain away the concreting over of rural England he seemed to favour.

His boss, Eric Pickles, has the political power to tackle this problem. For reasons it is difficult to understand, action seems very thin on the ground.

Curiously, we have had moratoria on building in Cheshire East in the recent past – indeed we heard yesterday that has come back to haunt Cheshire East as those years of low building rates now count against us in the 5-year supply building figures.

So why not another moratorium until the Local Plan is complete so planning can proceed in an orderly rather than opportunistic way, as at present?

But that is probably too sensible to stand the slightest chance of success.

In the meantime, contributions to the Medical Practice and to education in Audlem were mentioned yesterday as part of Hockenhull's application. Hopefully that will happen – but don't hold your breath.

(*This article was written the day after the planning decision on Wednesday 10th December)

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