Dear Editor,
It is now a year since this Labour/Independent administration of Cheshire East conducted their own next phase of the Local Plan consultation.
The completed consultation of 2018 was abandoned under a headline of “a reduction in allocated housing sites”.
Great headline maybe, but not without considerable risk for our green fields and vital housing land supply numbers by placing huge reliance on a sufficiency of ‘windfall sites’.
As well as announcing this reduction in housing sites they cheerily commented, “We want to move promptly to a position where our five-year supply targets properly reflect the revised approach towards identifying housing requirements”.
How could it all go so wrong?
Here we are at the end of August 2020, no announcement on the 2019 consultation – beyond there may be a further one, and an increasingly battered housing land supply along with a worrying rise in the number of lost planning appeals.
But….. they said, ‘their consultation would provide a position of strength and would not risk a planning free for all”.
Provision to meet the needs of our Gypsy and Traveller community and a new transit site to provide safe and regulated accommodation for members of the community travelling through Cheshire East was heralded.
Yet a year on, no headline beyond ‘No transit site’, just a North West TV News report of unauthorised works in the Knutsford area and not so much as a whisper of any progress with what now appears to be ‘The Forgotten Local Plan’.
Cllr Corcoran, when you took leadership, stage two of the Local Plan was well underway.
You delayed the progress promising a prompt response to your consultation and fifteen months on you have not delivered.
The residents of Cheshire East deserve better, time to stop hiding Cllr Corcoran.
Yours
Rachel Bailey
Cheshire East Councillor
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