Council gives green light to its own relief road dump site plan
THE council has approved its own plans to use land to dump waste created by the Poynton Relief Road - despite claims the decision is ‘inconsistent’ with previous ones in the area.
Proposals from Cheshire East Council’s highways team to store the surplus material at a site near Adlington Business Park were given a unanimous thumbs up by a planning committee.
The plans had attracted complaints from businessman Simon Gleave, who says he had an application for a storage unit on a neighbouring site turned down in 2018.
And that the basis for refusal - the road used for access would not be suitable for HGVs - applied to this council application equally.
Adlington Parish Council also objected to the relief road storage proposals, saying that approval would be ‘inconsistent with previous planning decisions’.
But the committee heard from planning officer Peter Hooley, who said: “It is essential to facilitate the delivery of key local transport infrastructure.”
He told members that the storage site was to replace another - that would have the same access issues - but which was in the green belt and for which permission was already in place.
The new site was described as ‘more practicable’ and has been reclassified in the Cheshire East Local Plan from green belt to land for employment use.
Mr Hooley said: “One of the main issues raised is about access to the site. The site that has consent would have needed access as well.
”There’s clearly going to be disruption to the site in future, (but) the concerns over how this site would be accessed, to some extent, are largely academic as they are going to have to take place in any event.”
The issue is the road is 5m wide but needs to be 7.3m to accommodate HGVs. It is also used by pedestrians, cyclists and horse riders.
It was said at the meeting that the planning application is for temporary use of three years.
But access via the existing road would only be needed for 18 months as because after that it could be done via the relief road development itself.
The Poynton Relief Road, which already has planning permission, will be 3km long and work is expected to begin this year and finish in August 2022.
As part of this approval an area for material storage was designated but the council now wants to move it to this new site, which measures nearly two hectares.
Once construction
is completed the area will be returned to open grassland.
The £50m Poynton Relief Road will connect with the Manchester Airport Relief Road and is predicted to bring economic benefits to the area, ease congestion and improve air quality.
Upon refusal of Mr Gleave’s application Cheshire East planners listed ‘threat to the delivery of the Poynton Relief Road’, impact on a bridleway and the road being too narrow as reasons. The decision was upheld at appeal.