Silent protest at Heathfield Road site

A group of residents, dismayed at the recommendation to Cheshire East Planning Committee, that the Hockenhull development at Heathfield Road/Mill Lane should be allowed to go ahead, gathered for a silent protest as the Committee members came on a site visit yesterday morning.

Once again let down, as they see it, by Cheshire East planners, the group silently followed the group of Committee members as they inspected the site.

On the two previous occasions this application has been heard it was turned down unanimously.

At the Strategic Planning Board on 10th October 2013, Cheshire East Councillors were scathing about the access via Heathfield Road which they described as totally unsuitable, a view curiously not shared by the council's Highways representatives.

Evidence given by the developer was regarded very negatively by councillors on both the Strategic Planning Board at the October meeting and by the Southern Planning Committee's councillors when the second application was heard several months later.

Hopefully, despite the recommendation to approve by planners, the committee members will remain consistent in their views as this third application is considered next Wednesday. Councillors felt Heathfield Road was a totally unsuitable road to take further development a year ago. The road, as they saw yesterday , is precisely the same now.

Councillors at the Southern Planning Meeting regarded as a joke Mr Hockenhull's claim that the field was infill when he claimed it was surrounded by housing already. One said: "If that isn't open countryside, I am giving up!".

As councillors will have seen yesterday, it is the same open countryside now as it was a year ago.

An earlier Appeal by Hockenhull for the same land ten years ago was also turned by the Planning Inspectorate.

On site visits such as this, councillors are not allowed to speak to members of the public, hence the silent nature of local residents' behaviour yesterday.

Whether their protest against the voraciousness of developers – and the lack of a Cheshire East Local Plan which has led to this planning mess – will have any more effect than other protests at sites across rural Cheshire East, is yet to be seen.

But at the very least, we hope the integrity of Cheshire East councillors will mean they will speak out as they have done before on the two previous occasions they have considered this particular application.

That might just defuse the view now held by many that the much vaunted 'Localism' appears, in practice, to mean the complete refusal to take account of any local opinion.

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