Local plan scoping consultation

The new local plan should be built with an infrastructure-first policy including cumulative capacity tests applied at settlement level i.e. school, medical, transport, leisure and town centre capacity assessed where people actually experience them.
There should be an infrastructure delivery plan, describing each settlement separately so that so that residents of each town can see what is proposed for their town and whether it is deliverable and funded. A borough-wide schedule does not allow that judgement to be made.

The scoping should first assess what each community can support – including the capacity of existing schools, medical, transport and leisure facilities – as well as housing; identifying also the need for new and/or improved facilities. Only then should new sites be considered for these uses. Further, that consideration should identify where new and/or improved road, cycle, bus and rail links are needed to ensure that the new development is sustainable.
The Council's list of submitted sites shows that land has now been promoted on every side of Knutsford. Whilst acknowledging that "the submission of a site to the council does not necessarily mean that it will be included in the new local plan", it does indicate the pressure that Knutsford will come under unless a strong infrastructure-first strategy is implemented which assesses the cumulative effect of development. The council must avoid the situation where a series of individually defensible decisions produces a collectively indefensible outcome.

With reference to paragraph 5.23
The review of the settlement hierarchy should be based on the actual current capacity of services, not merely on the presence of a facility. A town with a primary school at capacity, GP lists closed or under strain and a constrained highway network is not, in any practical sense, as capable of absorbing growth as a simple assessment of its facilities would suggest. The hierarchy assessment should explicitly distinguish between the existence of a service and its available headroom.

Development in urban areas, for reasons of accessibility, is preferred over Green Belt. Not only is conservation of agriculture, ecology and open space important but settlements surrounded by Green Belt tend not to have such good transport connections therefore increased development leads directly to increased use of private transport.

With regard to the Settlement hierarchy review - The review should be based on the actual current capacity of services, not merely on their presence. A town with schools at capacity, GP lists closed or under strain and a constrained highway network is not as capable of absorbing growth as a simple assessment of its facilities would suggest.
The hierarchy review should explicitly distinguish between the existence of a service and its available headroom.

Considerations of development in settlements should be based on the actual current capacity of services, not merely on the presence of a facility. For instance, a town with a constrained highway network, primary schools at capacity, and GP lists under strain is not as capable of absorbing growth as a simple summary of its facilities would suggest.
For Knutsford, an infrastructure-led plan should include:
• Transport capacity and modelling for the road network, including the A50, A5033 and A537 corridors through and around the town, known local pinch points including Adams Hill and the town centre roundabout, and the interaction between local traffic, Tatton Park visitor traffic and strategic through-traffic.
• A recognition that private transport is a necessity in Knutsford. The shift to sustainable means of transport is limited not only by rail capacity and station accessibility on the Mid-Cheshire line but also by a real limiting factor – the current infrequency of service.
• Given the traffic pinch points mentioned above, school capacity cannot meaningfully be assessed for Knutsford as a whole. To be sustainable and to encourage active travel, primary schools must serve the housing immediately around them. A surplus place on the far side of a congested town requiring travel through the pinch point is not a sustainable place. So, allocating further housing on the western side of the town without matching primary capacity on the same side would exacerbate a problem that already exists. Such an issue would not be detected in a capacity assessment at town-level.
• An assessment of primary care capacity — GP list sizes, premises capacity and expansion potential. As Knutsford’s population ages, primary care comes under more pressure.