NEARBY residents are celebrating after planning chiefs at Warrington threw out proposals for a controversial housing development.
Members of the borough council’s development management committee rejected an application by house builders Redrow Homes to build 26 houses on land off Doeford Close, Culcheth.
Nearly 50 residents packed into the meeting to hear councillors – who had already carried out a site inspection – turn down the proposals against the advice of officers.
The decision, by seven votes to two, with one abstention, was greeted with a round of applause.
Residents are now hoping to obtain village green status for the land which forms part of the grounds of the former Newchurch Hospital.
They say it has been used as a public open space for more than 20 years.
The hospital site was developed by Redrow in the 1990s, when more than 200 dwellings were built.
But part was omitted from the original development because it was within a safeguarding zone for an explosives depot operated by Orica UK Ltd at Glazebury.
However, Redrow say they are now collaborating with Orica and no development will take place in advance of changes to the exclusion zone.
Residents’ spokesman Geoff Hardern, borough councillor Chris Vobe and parish councillor Mike Vobe expressed concerns over traffic, parking and road access – as well as continued health and safety concerns over the explosives depot.
After the meeting, Cllr Chris Vobe said: “This was a tremendous victory for local people, who have fought tirelessly to protect this important green space from development.
“The strength of feeling was plain to see in both the number of people who turned up to the Town Hall, and the sheer jubilation after the result was announced.
“Culcheth people have enjoyed the benefits of this great open space for over 20 years.”
Pictured: Doeford Close residents at the Town Hall.
23 Comments
Good to see a victory for residents and councillors against the joint efforts of officers and developers. Let’s hope Peel Hall sees a similar result.
It will be interesting to see if Redrow appeal the decision to the Planning Inspector, and the decision the Planning Inspector then makes. It makes you wonder why is it that the decision to seek village green status is only made when a planning application for homes etc is made.
Your Greyness – in what way do you mean similar? Has their been a recomendation about Peel Hall yet if so which way has it goine?
At least you sound a bit moe upbeat today than your name implies.
Usually you are hacked off with life – have yu found a silver lining toi your grey cloud?
I’m not hacked off with life at all. Don’t judge my life on the low opinion I have of the way you lot have allowed council employees – for one reason or the other – to run this town like a banana republic for the last few years. If I seem upbeat, it’s because one or two of you seem to have recalled the location of your cojones.
The Peel Hall comment was obviously me just hoping the council continues to stick to its own policies about developing greenfeld sites, especially in light of the rather interesting way Satnam and their contacts in the council are going about their business.
A few councillors may have now realized why so many of us grey_man included, lost faith and trust in planning officers and those advising them. But we continue to be hacked off because the realization and its remedy do not go far enough. How can it when virtually the same people who were allowed to run things as they pleased for so long are still doing the same jobs? We will have to wait and see if Doeford Close heralds the silver lining of an open, realistic approach to planning. Why has it taken so long? Heaven knows we have waited long enough. But as grey_man says the interesting way Satnam and their contacts in the council are going about their business suggests those in banana republic mould will continue to use their ill gotten power for as long as political reluctance allows them to.
Your Greyness you do have a very low opinion of people especially me. I have just had to use my dictionary to look up your colourful phrase; Spanish readers may be surprised about your use of their language.
I am very puzzled by your use of the term ‘council’ making decisions – surely you mean councillors – after all wasn’t it they who voted down the application on Thursday just as they vote on all other applications that come before them at the planning committees? I imagine that you are one of these people who wants everything to go their own way – you do sound like a bit of a control freak, blaming everyone else. I imagine you’re a bit of a sore loser.
Frankly Geoff I don’t think you know me well enough to pass personal comment. And when I say you don’t know me well enough, I mean at all.
And yes I did mean councillors and my praise for the decision was aimed at them for ignoring the recommendations of officers.
Of course councillors vote on the information that is given them, and when that information is suspect – as we all know it has been on at least one very contentious planning issue – we have every right to be suspicious of the decision making process.
What I would also point out to you is that in the cases of Marton Close, the planning records destruction and Walton Hall, it was the actions of individual residents rather than councillors that dealt with those situations. Councillors have merely insulted our intelligence with their officer fed explanations for those cases.
My German is better than my Spanish by the way. Also, ich freue mich sehr dass du endlich deine Eier wieder gefunden hast.
And I mean that as a compliment.
You certainly do have an obsession with the male anatomy and language – but whatever takes your fancy. As you know the decision was very close last Thursday – I wonder what your reaction would have been had it gone the other way, would you have been so bouyant in your praise?
Obviously not. Because that would have meant once again you would have let officers go against the council’s own policies and strategy. I really don’t know where you’re going with this because I am welcoming the new found confidence councillors have shown in actually standing up for the people of this town rather than leaving them at the mercy of an unelected rabble. The day I realised that this town was being run by its officers was the day Diana Terris decided that the current budgetary constraints didn’t apply to her income and those of some of her colleagues and she didn’t give two hoots what councillors thought about it. I’m hopeful those days are now behind us and councillors can get on with the job they are elected to do and that ‘officers’ remember that actually they are ’employees’.
PS. I bet I can ask you a question that nobody in the council will answer.
Your hopes are misplaced because those days are not behind us. What you call the unelected rabble are still intent on shaping things to suit their own priorities and they are managing to do so despite the new found confidence councillors have or are trying to show. This problem will not go away until the main rabble rousers are either removed or put out to grass.
grey_man – I’m not sure that you can prove your theory of conspiracy one way or another based on the vote on one application. But as a student of planning committee voting patterns do you think that there is any difference between results of say the last 12 months as against a similar period 3 years ago. As for your question I’ve no doubt that you can come up with a question that nobody in the council will answer.
There is no conspiracy Geoff. Just the facts. The planning department wasn’t fit for purpose three years ago. It remains to be seen whether it is now. Officers recommending that developments take place on greenfield sites in contradiction of the council’s own policy and having their previously denied meetings with developers dragged out of them via expensive FOI requests doesn’t exactly reassure an already cynical electorate. Does it?
I believe the main protagonist has left the council. Would it would have been too much to expect the council to actually discipline him for gross misconduct? Or has he left with our money in his back pocket?
I’m glad to read that you think things are changing in the right direction and I believe that they are.
On the issue of developers meeting with planners surely that is permissible because they need to seek advice about what they can and can’t do even though we may not like what they intend to do.
I do take great exception when developers who ask for advice simply chose to ignore it and there have been a number of recent examples where applicants have gone ahead regardless.
This gun-hoe attitude has to be challenged more firmly even though it takes time and effort and the site returned to its original state. Undermining the planning department can give some developers the impression that they can get away with stuff.
Unfortunately Greenfield sites don’t have the protection that I for one would like to see and the brown field ones need to be developed first. New planning regulations from the current Government will no doubt seek to undermine this and put such sites at Culcheth and Peel Hall at real risk even when residents feel that they have secured a victory and will be taken to an appeal. In such cases SOLID reasons for refusal need to be put forward to the Planning Inspectorate.
If that’s the case Geoff, why did planning officers fail to just cough up to how many meetings they’d held with Satnam? We’ve all seen how much FOI requests come to. I’m aware that may have to be a rhetorical question.
I don’t know.
Maybe there could be something like a register of visitors to the planning department. After all it shouldn’t be a secret and it can’t be commercially sensitive especially if the applicant already owns the land?
Anything that can help reduce costs of unecessary FOI and make things transparent can’t be a bad idea in my view.
The departments responsible for planning and some other facilities in the borough have not been fit for purpose for much longer than three years. I have lived here for 12 years. Electorate disillusionment has been around all that time. My longer suffering neighbours tell me it was there before that and shows no sign of going away. As Geoff Settle says things might be changing in the right direction and I believe he is right. But that welcome change and the removal of the odd protagonist or two does not begin to address the culture of disinformation which reached its peak on Diane Terris’ watch and about which we are rightly cynical. Change is taking too long. As grey_man shows recent incidents tell us we are still being given sanitized versions of events. These are less than factually complete and worded so as to avoid laying blame on individuals or departments. All the while the culture of disinformation remains unchallenged, transparency will be that more difficult to bring about.
Well Tina we are at the start of a process to select a new CEO. In my experience that is an opportunity for a change of direction and culture but whatever happens they must show leadership. The best ones that I have worked for have got their staff on board from the start and conveyed to them their vision of a successful organisation and supported them through the change process. The CEOs that haven’t done this have been quickly shown the door.
Change isn’t easy and can be very incomfortable but the companies that I have worked for have continued to change, adapt and evlove.
I don’t mean to be disrespectful Geoff but as I said change for the better is taking too long. Over 18 months have passed since the last critical Ombudsman’s report. Before that I believe there were at least three earlier reports where the Ombudsman criticized Council officers and three from the District Auditor on the same topic, all of which took place in the last 10 years. From my experience and that of my husband, had the private sector companies we work for clocked up bad reports at this rate the people who were responsible would have been shown the door a long time ago, regardless of their standing and whether or not a new CEO was about to be appointed. This isn’t changing, adapting and evolving in the normal corporate sense. There is and has been an obvious and urgent need for WBC to put its house in order asap, because it has been running without proper control for far too long, even with a highly and as it turns out grossly overpaid CEO in charge. The delay in dealing with the problems is making it all the more difficult to put them right.
Incidentally Geoff, I think developers would have every reason to think ‘they can get away with stuff”. A quick read of the LGO Report would give them that impression wouldn’t it? It’s not a question of the planning department being undermined. It’s a question of the nature of the planning department.
I need to leave this now but my final point on that score would be that it seems difficult to imagine what constitutes a sacking offence at WBC. Recent events have seen employees break the law without being sacked, mislead councillors without being sacked and ignore police concerns about the wellbeing of residents without being sacked. Those three issues alone are reported in the recent LGO investigation. My hope is that the new Chief Executive will have the chutzpah (is that better Geoff?) to run the organisation as one in which good work is acknowledged and rewarded, bad work is managed properly and, where necessary, staff actually face disciplinary action when they deserve it.
No worries Tina. Like you I have always worked in the private sector, where change had to happen swiftly otherwise our competitors would have driven us out of business. Change wasn’t painless far from it. I know from the experiences that my wife is going through in the public sector that these changes are starting to filter through help place of work and she does not like it largely because they don’t appear in my opinion to have a great change management programme and managers are not communicating well with their staff.
Changing culture and practise is not easy and quite often a person in brought in for a period of 12 to 24 months to drive change through and heads off into the sun set with their bag of swag once they have driven through change. They carry the can and take it with them. Meanwhile structures, processes and procedures were changed and improved, staff given the opportunity to question why things are being done the way they are – often they were given a clean sheet of paper and asked ‘What is it we are trying to deliver for our customers, our business, where is the dead wood, what can technology offer us.
We did this on a regular basis. Our competitors were doing the same and driving down their costs. This meant that at each contract renewal our customers wanted a faster, better service for less at a higher quality and if we didn’t provide what they wanted we lost the contract.
I haven’t worked in the planning department nor have I studied their processes and procedures however those who I have met are conscientious and have a difficult job to do. I am aware from my experience of planning decisions of the pressures exerted by applicants as well as the opposing sides for and against development. The planning process is very rigid and there are clearly defined technical procedures to follow. I think this more than anything is why change has been slow, it’s complex especially in this case.
However now that the report has been received and studied coupled with the Government invoking changes in the planning process it is perhaps is the best time to take stock and introduce change that will require strong leadership because of the pressures phased on the department on a daily basis.
Can’t get to grips with planners who have broken the law, mislead councillors and ignored police concerns about the wellbeing of residents all without being sacked, somehow being thconscientious. “Conscience (SOE): A moral sense of right or wrong; a sense of responsibility felt for private or public actions, motives, etc.; the faculty or principle that leads to the approval of right thought or action and condemnation of wrong.”
If grey_man has correctly interpreted the LGO, then conscience striken yes but conscientious no.