Lib Dem group fails in bid to quit masterplan
AN EXTRAORDINARY bid to pull Stockport out of Greater Manchester’s housing masterplan was launched by politicians as protests over plans to build thousands of homes on the greenbelt mount.
The Lib Dems tried and failed - to have the borough withdraw from the region’s mammoth housing drive.
Proposals for nearly 20,000 new homes, using nine per cent of the borough’s green belt, have proved massively contentious - and have sparked a series of heated public meetings and demonstrations.
The Greater Manchester Spatial Framework (GMSF), which is currently being consulted on, sets out where town hall chiefs plan to deliver nearly a quarter of a million new homes over the next two decades.
Some 4,000 homes are planned in High Lane, on greenbelt land; 2,400 in Woodford on greenbelt land; 3,700 along the A34 in Cheadle and Cheadle Hulme; and 2,000 by Outwood Farm in Heald Green.
Labour council leader Alex Ganotis said he would seek political consensus in the chamber before endorsing the plan.
Tory MPs William Wragg and Mary Robinson have already opposed building on greenbelt.
At the town hall’s latest full meeting, the Lib Dems tabled a shock amendment to Stockport’s local housing plan, calling for the borough to pull out of the regionwide framework.
The party is furious 12,000 homes could be built on the greenbelt, but they were defeated in their bid to withdraw from the process.
Former Cheadle MP, now Cheadle Hulme South councillor Mark Hunter, said Stockport’s plan was unacceptable and said the Lib Dems would not let developers ‘cherry pick’ sites for maximum profit.
He said the ‘writing was on the wall’ as soon as the proposals were published, adding: “We cannot stand idly by and see our precious greenbelt, which so many of us have fought to protect over the years, eaten up by those who seek to build all over it.
“We must act now to protect it for future generations. Residents simply don’t understand why the council might even consider development on greenbelt when so many brownfield sites remain untouched and when private developers have - in some cases - been given planning permission several times over for the same site without actually starting to build.
“The public at large are very unhappy with the proposals and simply find them unacceptable given the clear and explicit threat to greenbelt that they contain.
“What is the point of continuing the charade of working towards a GMSF plan we know is doomed to failure and is going to be completely unacceptable to those we represent?”
Labour’s executive member for economy and regeneration Kate Butler said withdrawing from the plan part way through the consultation would be an ‘insult to residents’.
She accused the Lib Dems of ‘grandstanding’ and said pulling Stockport from the GMSF so early in the process would be ‘anti-democratic’.