Planners are warned ‘town centre is full’
ADEFIANT councillor has warned that Stockport town centre is ‘at its absolute limit’ ahead of the borough starting work on a new housing masterplan.
Stockport pulled out of the region-wide ‘spatial framework’ strategy last year, with the proposed loss of green belt being too much for Tory and Lib Dem councillors to stomach.
It means the Labour-led authority now has until Autumn 2022 to address the issue through a draft local plan, rather than the ‘Places for Everyone’ blueprint pursued by the rest of Greater Manchester.
However, the borough still needs to build an estimated 18,500 homes between now and 2038 and has currently only found space for just over 11,000 - a shortfall of around 7,500.
More than 3,500 new homes are planned for Town Centre West under the Mayoral Development Corporation (MDC) regeneration scheme including at Weir Mill, St Thomas Gardens and the Royal George Quarter.
And it was controversial green belt schemes in areas such as High Lane, Heald Green and Romiley that ultimately led to the spatial framework’s demise in Stockport.
But Councillor Becky Crawford told a scrutiny committee meeting the new local plan must not be seen as an opportunity to cram yet more houses into the town centre.
“We are more than happy to have new communities developed for people to live here. It’s a brilliant place to live, we have the MDC,we’ve lots of things on the table at the moment,” she said.
“But this idea of everything being shoved into the town centre - this whole narrative of ‘can we get this 7,000 down to 6,000, where can we push them, where can we push them?’.
“Someone is going to have to be pragmatic and say ‘there are no more sites in the town centre, where else can these houses go?’.”
The Brinnington and Central councillor added: “Yes, maybe it’s on a field in High Lane, maybe it’s somewhere else but something is going to have to give at some point.”
Coun Grace Baynham had suggested the possibility of converting more offices into housing, given the likely post-pandemic shift to working from home.
But Coun Crawford told the meeting the town centre was at its ‘absolute limit’.
“Office blocks in district centres may be suitable for that, but in the town centre converting places of work into housing is just not a good idea - we are completely over-saturated,” she told the meeting. It has to be at the front of everyone’s mind that there’s no room in the town centre for all this housing and we need to preserve every bit of green space in the town centre as well.”
Coun Roy Driver made a similar point about parts of central Stockport being overburdened to spare greener, outlying areas.
He said: “The idea that some people may have is ‘can we move a few thousand housing units into the town centre, and into Reddish and Edgeley’ - we need to make sure people understand that’s not going to happen.”
The Reddish North councillor added that, while there may be some scope for development, there was not room for ‘shoving thousands and thousands of apartments’ into central areas.
“That would not be acceptable and that is a red line that needs to go down straight away,” he said.
A majority of councillors voted to endorse a ‘refreshed approach’ to developing a local plan including taking a ‘brownfield first approach’.
They also backed a period of community engagement over the summer and for the Development Plan Working Party to continue to lead on creating a draft plan for submission in Autumn 2022.
Liberal Democrat councillors on the committee abstained, having unsuccessfully moved to note, rather than endorse, the report’s recommendations.
Stockport council seeks to have an adopted local plan in place by Autumn 2023.