Earlier this evening I drove across to Irlam to attend a meeting called by residents opposed to council proposals, which involve building on 40 hectares (almost 100 acres) of land at Barton Moss. The plans seems to be to use this green belt for industrial use and “off-setting” this loss of valuable green belt by re-classifying some land in Little Hulton as green belt. The council says this will result in “no net loss of green belt land”.
Residents local to the area are quite rightly upset about these plans to remove what little green space we have left in Salford, and they are justifiably concerned the impact this will have on Irlam, Barton and Eccles if the plans go ahead. There will be a “net loss of green belt land” in Irlam.
It was heartening to see Irlam resident Keith Mann (also councillor for Cadishead), Irlam independent Councillor Houlton (who has suddenly appeared from his hidey-hole) joining Lib Dem Councillors Norman Owen (PPC for Salford & Eccles) and John Deas in cross-party support for Irlam residents. Even former Irlam councillor Roger Jones (who lost his seat to Cllr Houlton, following the rejection of the congestion charge) offered his support for the campaign.
Building on Barton Moss is just one small part of the Draft Core Strategy, a document the council have had out for consultation since 9th November of this year. There are just a few weeks left before the consultation period ends and the meeting was called in order to generate as much local opinion on the matter before 15th January 2010 (the last day for submissions to the consultation).
While the Draft Core Strategy takes some reading and undoubtably contains a lot of good ideas and objectives for Salford over the next 20 years, building on green belt is not one of them. Claiming they can “re-classify” land in Little Hulton, that has previously been for industrial use, as green belt is nonsense and residents are not stupid enough to be taken in by this ‘con’.
Tonight I signed the petition, which now contains over 1,000 names and I am urging all residents to have a say on Draft Core Strategy, in particular, the council’s stupid plans to rip up almost 100 acres of green belt land and build an industrial estate on top of it.
You can have your say at http://www.salford.gov.uk/cs-haveyoursay.htm or you can email: plans.consultation@salford.gov.uk
Alternatively, you can write to:
Spatial Planning
Address
Sustainable Regeneration Directorate
Civic Centre
Chorley Road
Swinton
M27 5BY
While there are aspects of the Draft Core Strategy that have noble and worthy objectives, ripping up 100 aces of green belt land is not one of them and I wholeheartedly support Irlam residents in their quest to remove this silly idea from the council’s plans. Councillor Norman Owen has promised to set up a meeting with local residents and council officers, so that views can be exchanged and hopefully an amicable solution can be suggested as an alternative. I look forward to that meeting.
Earlier this evening Councillor Norman Owen (Lib Dem Prospective Parliamentary Candidate for Salford & Eccles) and I drove across to Irlam to attend a meeting called by residents opposed to council proposals, which involve building on 40 hectares (almost 100 acres) of land at Barton Moss. The plans seems to be to use this green belt for industrial use and “off-setting” this loss of valuable green belt by re-classifying some land in Little Hulton as green belt. The council says this will result in “no net loss of green belt land”.
Residents local to the area are quite rightly upset about these plans to remove what little green space we have left in Salford, and they are justifiably concerned the impact this will have on Irlam, Barton and Eccles if the plans go ahead. There will be a “net loss of green belt land” in Irlam.
It was heartening to see Irlam resident Keith Mann (also councillor for Cadishead), Irlam independent Councillor Houlton (who has suddenly appeared from his hidey-hole) joining Lib Dem Councillors Norman Owen (PPC for Salford & Eccles) and John Deas in cross-party support for Irlam residents. Even former Irlam councillor Roger Jones (who lost his seat to Cllr Houlton, following the rejection of the congestion charge) offered his support for the campaign.
Building on Barton Moss is just one small part of the Draft Core Strategy, a document the council have had out for consultation since 9th November of this year. There are just a few weeks left before the consultation period ends and the meeting was called in order to generate as much local opinion on the matter before 15th January 2010 (the last day for submissions to the consultation).
While the Draft Core Strategy takes some reading and undoubtably contains a lot of good ideas and objectives for Salford over the next 20 years, building on green belt is not one of them. Claiming they can “re-classify” land in Little Hulton, that has previously been for industrial use, as green belt is nonsense and residents are not stupid enough to be taken in by this ‘con’.
Tonight I signed the petition, which now contains over 1,000 names and I am urging all residents to have a say on the Draft Core Strategy, in particular, the council’s stupid plans to tear up almost 100 acres of green belt land and build an industrial estate on top of it.
You can have your say at http://www.salford.gov.uk/cs-haveyoursay.htm or you can email: plans.consultation@salford.gov.uk
Alternatively, you can write to:
Spatial Planning
Sustainable Regeneration Directorate
Civic Centre
Chorley Road
Swinton
M27 5BY
While there are aspects of the Draft Core Strategy that have noble and worthy objectives, ripping up 100 acres of green belt land is not one of them and I wholeheartedly support Irlam residents in their quest to remove this silly idea from the council’s plans. Councillor Norman Owen has promised to set up a meeting with local residents and council officers, so that views can be exchanged and hopefully an amicable solution can be suggested as an alternative. I look forward to that meeting.
There will be no “cubby little flats” in Langworthy, as there is no room for that (although the council are creating more of that room with their daily demolishing of terraced houses in Langworthy and other wards across Salford). However, if the only way we can get affordable/social housing in Langworthy is to add some more apartments at the Quays, I’ll take it.
The Council’s current rules are pretty irrelevent, given that the Core Strategy and associated LDF documents are about ripping up the planning rules and starting afresh.
I support sustainable and affordable new housing, but even the tens of thousands of new properties proposed under the Core Strategy won’t provide affordable housing. Cubby little flats are precious little use to families in Langworthy.
While I admit the 40,000 target is too high – as I explained in my original blog post, under the council’s current ridiculous planning rules their target is the only way to deliver much needed affordable housing. The council have no clue how to bring much needed affordable/social housing into Salford. It seems the housing strategy proposed in the Draft Core Strategy is Plan A and there is no Plan B.
Lastly, it’s not been my experience that local residents are against more affordable housing – perhaps it’s just Conservatives that don’t support affordable & social housing for those that need it?
The 40000 target is absurd, particularly as the only way you can conceivably build so many houses is either through tiny apartments or greenfield development, neither of which are desirable outcomes nor supported by local residents across Salford.
Central Salford is in line for thousands of new “dwellings” but they will be neither affordable nor suitable family homes.
I am worried about the effects, Iain. Do we really need an extra 33,000 dwellings (code for flats) + 9,500 new homes? Well, yes, we need some of those – as we have such a huge housing shortage in Salford (and indeed, in Langworthy). The target of over 40,000 homes though – hmm, the predictions in the Core Strategy say that the population will grow by nearly 14,000 over the next 20 years and if you add in the housing shortage (roughly 15,000-20,000) we are still building too many “dwellings”.
However, it seems that in order for the council to be able to deliver it’s target of affordable homes they are willing to let developers build whatever they want, wherever they want (as long as they also build the required affordable homes that is a part of the planning rules, currently I think it’s 20% affordable housing for every hectare developed).
So, in order to deliver the 15,000-20,000 affordable housing that would be required to completely eliminate the current housing shortage, we would need to allow developers to build over 80,000 new “dwellings”. As you can see, the proposals in the Draft Core Strategy fall short of that figure – it seems a compromise has been delivered, in order to achieve thousands of new affordable homes, the council want us to accept that developers are going to be given free reign to build whatever quantity they want.
More annoyingly, it seems the council is willing to waive the 20% affordable housing target per hectare in Salford Quays, as the Core Strategy claims “it would not be financially viable for developers if the rule remained in force”.
So Salford Council is happy to break it’s own planning rules when they aren’t convenient.
I believe there can be a financially viable alternative for developers, that doesn’t necessarily involve us building thousands of apartments that will lay empty for decades, just so someone else can pick take care of our corporate responsibility to social tenants and those who wish to climb onto the first rung of the property ladder.
I am currently putting together my own consultation response to the Draft Core Strategy and hope to have some input into the official Liberal Democrat position on the Core Strategy.
Steve, what do you think about the effects that the Core Strategy will have on Langworthy? Do you support the housing target in the RSS and are you happy with the huge percentage of apartments set to be built in the regional centre and the rest of central Salford?