“We must save our Green Belt” say local councillors

THE Green Belt should be sacrosanct – with no housing built on it as long there is other land  available.
This was the view of parish councillors from Culcheth, Croft and Winwick at a special meeting to consider Warrington Borough Council’s Local Plan Preferred Development Option, which proposes building thousands of homes in the Green Belt.
As a result, it was agreed that the parish councils should make a joint response to the borough council in addition to individual responses from Culcheth and Glazebury, Croft and Winwick.
The borough council’s proposals would involve 300 houses on Green Belt land at Culcheth, 50 at Glazebury, 60 at Croft, 90 at Winwick and 40 at Hollins Green.
But Cllr Keith Bland – a member of both Culcheth and Glazebury and Croft parish councils, said: “The Green Belt should be sacrosanct.
“No houses should be built on Green Belt land because the number of houses the borough council say are needed can be provided without touching the Green Belt.
“The trouble is, developers are also making submissions and most of them involve the Green Belt.
“They are proposing more than 200 hectares of land at Culcheth – including two major sites of 111 hectates and 96 hectares – 129 at Croft and a number of smaller sites at Winwick – and they reckon they can build 30 houses per hectare.
“If building on anything like this scale took place it would completely transform all three villages. In fact, they wouldn’t be villages any more.
“The infrastructure is not there to support this kind of development – Croft hasn’t got any shops at all.
“The worrying thing is that these developers have got money – they can afford to appeal against decisions and if they don’t get their own way at first they tend to do so eventually.
“There are large areas of open land at Culcheth and Croft which will be at risk.
“We only have until September 29 to get our responses in and it is important that we do – not just the parish councils but individual residents as well. We must protect our Green Belt.”