SOUTH Warrington residents are being urged to attend a crucial meeting over plans to build nearly 1,000 homes at Grappenhall Heys and Appleton Cross.
So many people attended the last planning committee meeting at Warrington town hall it had to be cancelled on safety grounds and is now taking place at the Pyramid next Thursday (June 29) at 6.30pm.
Local councillor Judith Wheeler, who is helping co-ordinate the campaign to get as many residents to attend as possible said: “Please make every effort to attend. We Need your support. Tell your neighbours, friends and family and bring them along with you.”
Leaflets have been distributed around the area urging people to attend and also been displayed in various locations across South Warrington.
The planning application is by the Home and Community Agency (HCA) for 400 properties at Grappenhall Heys and 370 at Appleton Cross.
Planning officers are recommending the schemes be approved – but the campaigners say there are major issues which need to be settled before the development can go ahead.
Earlier this year the council approved outline plans by the HCA for 180 homes at nearby Stretton on land bounded by Pewterspear Green Road and Ashford Drive.
Local campaigners so the new homes would bring over 2,000 further vehicles on to local roads with lack of infrastructure to cope, including oversubscribed school places, deficient healthcare provision and lack of amenities.
They are also concerned over plans for another 600 homes planned in Stretton by Wallace Land Investments and the nearby Sandymoor developments which will impact on local roads.
They will be collecting signatures for a petition outside The Forge this Saturday (June 24) from 10am-3pm and outside Grappenhall Heys Walled garden on Sunday (June 25) from 2pm-4pm.
There is an online petition at https://you.38degrees.org.uk/petitions/rethink/infrastructure-on-south-warrington-housing-plans.
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Some of the open land that will vanish under housing
2 Comments
“Planning officers are recommending the schemes be approved – but the campaigners say there are major issues which need to be settled before the development can go ahead.”
Pathetic, misleading, farce of a campaign – nothing but an attempt at political point scoring.
Do they think we have forgotten that it was the Lib Dem administration that forced the demolition of the Victorian Stockton Heath Primary School to provide an extra 100 primary school places in an area that already had 900 surplus places – with no answers to questions as to where the children were going to come from!
Or, that it was the Lib Dems who tried to rob Cobbs Estate of their open space to build a medical centre – which figures at the time showed was needed closer to Barnton – it seemed obvious they were planning this to accommodate an increase in the local population from future housing developments
Now, after seemingly working for years to set the infrastructure to make it easier for developers to get planning permission they set up a ‘campaign’. A ‘campaign’ note, that focuses on traffic congestion problems – whilst they already know WBC has highway improvement plans which will be used to counteract their argument.
“the campaigners say there are major issues which need to be settled before the development can go ahead.”
This is not an attempt to stop the development! They say that due to the permissions previously granted to the CNT the best that can be achieved is adequate infrastructure – that is rubbish! Those permissions are years out of date and things have changed, and there are valid ‘material’ considerations which should be taken into consideration before any planning decisions are made.
These developments should not just be accepted they should be fiercely opposed!
One thing is for sure with all these proposed new and big housing developments being submitted lately Warrington is more than ever going to need the new bridge crossing to ease traffic congestion around the town centre and other routes. If these and other large scale housing plans are given the go ahead that that will surely be a huge tick in the box for gaining funding for the new bridge. On the down side though the more houses…the more cars and traffic on the roads…so we could still find ourselves in gridlock even if/when the new higher level bridge and road infrastructure is built. Oh well…….. we all knew that anyway 🙁