Greg Powell

Councillor, Cheadle SE

FOLLOWING the questions I raised at Cheadle Town Council earlier this month, CTC have arranged an extraordinary meeting to discuss the FMG Reports (Leisure Provision) and Cushman and Wakefield (C&W) Reports (Development options for Cheadle town centre) on April 26.

Ahead of that meeting I have read through the previous Cheadle Town Centre Master Plan (Adopted in only 2014) and the accompanying documents.

The biggest flaw in that plan (dated 2011) as well as likely cost, was that it drew on expansion of the retail and office space, which was clearly at odds with retail trends.

For example Woolworths had already closed its stores in January 2009 which was a clear sign of the major challenges of high street retail versus online (five years before the plan for Cheadle was adopted).

There were however some key and important points that were raised in that plan. First, it recognised the need to retain the 385 car parking spaces and in fact increase them to 400 spaces (recognising the proposed increased retail/office usage of the Tape Street Car park area) through an elevated retail and public realm above the existing Tape street car park.

Secondly, the proposed public realm was centrally located near to greyhound walk and opposite the post office providing a pedestrianised central gathering place and feed out point to the high street, Guild Hall, Chapel Street businesses and the Pugin Church.

The report did at least read like town planning, to try and improve our community. I have started to go through the FMG and latest C&W (Commercial Real Estate) reports including the C&W options presented for the same Tape Street car park area.

What is striking is there is substantial loss of parking provision on all current options and that in all, bar option H (termed the big bang), the idea of a public realm space is lost. Further all the plans remove substantial parking provision.

All options build some level of housing on the Tape street car park (including smack bang in the middle of the central space previously identified as public realm).

As far as I can see Option A has the least impact on parking provision in the town but that still reduces 385 existing spaces down to around 153 (a 60 per cent) loss.

By the time you get to Option F, all Tape Street parking is removed once allowances are made for the Doctors and residential properties, leaving no provision for the High Street, Guild Hall, Chapel Street businesses.

First pass figures suggest we would be missing 500 car parking spaces (in order to allow SMDC to sell the Leisure Centre site for yet more housing).

The Local Plan identifies a 25 per cent population swell from 1,136 houses already identified on sites in the local plan, relating to 2,722 more residents.

That would suggest up to 2,000 more cars, some of which you would assume would place additional demand on parking.