Local plan scoping consultation

I will give responses to a number of bullet points below:

"the amount and locations of new housing and employment development" - The plan proposed is overwhelmingly related to new housing. Simply building houses does not improve the local economy in any long or medium term manner.

"protection and improvement of open areas" - The plan proposed is permanently destroying open areas of land, some of which contain public rights of way. In no way is the proposed local plan protecting or improving open areas. I should also point out that Macclesfield and Gawsworth are likely to be subject to the appallingly stupid experimental CO2 pipeline. Combined with the housing development, you will completely destroy the large areas of open space, farmland and make life misery for residents.

"provision of new infrastructure" - Aside from the residential roads that will be built for the new housing, there will no upgrading of existing infrastructure. Anyone who uses Congleton Road will be aware just how busy it has become over the last 10 years and it is regularly gridlocked in places. This is exacerbated further by the fact Macclesfield Tip is now the only waste disposal centre for miles around. This often leads to queues on the blind summit which is directly outside the tip, and I have witnessed many near misses of people trying to get passed the queue only to be met by oncoming traffic. More houses will lead to even more traffic and even more pressure. Macclesfield's roads are appallingly congested at present, it is very hard to get around in a vehicle on most weekdays. This plan only exacerbates this issue.

"improvement of town centres and community facilities" - Gawsworth has a small number of community facilities which are organically created (ie by local residents). This is dependent on local residents chipping in together (such as the community hub). The larger a community becomes, the more impersonal it becomes. The development will actively threaten the close knit community that exists and ultimate cost Cheshire East more money, as people who once relied on friends and neighbours will instead use Cheshire East social care services to meet their needs. In addition, I find it somewhat farcical that these local plans claim to improve the town centre. Macclesfield town centre is a shadow of what it once was. Kebab shops, barber shops and vape shops, all of which CE council seems to give licenses for.

"management of waste" - As mentioned, The Macclesfield tip is the only one around for miles. More houses means more waste which means greater use of an already overburdened tip. This has led to increases in fly tipping, which costs a lot of money for the council to remove. This local plan will make waste management in the area even more difficult.

"adapting to climate change" - The plan proposes removing arable farmland from production and building vast numbers of houses on it. Removing farmland from production means we are more reliant on foreign imports, which have to be transported here using fossil fuels, thus generating carbon. Building houses is also a very carbon intensive industry.

"promoting healthy and safe communities" - In what way does this local plan improve the health or safety of anyone in the community?

"enabling growth of the local economy" - Adding more people to an area grows the economy on paper in basic GDP terms. Genuine economic growth in terms of per capita improvement cannot be achieved simply by dumping more people in an area. Often, it is actually detrimental to per capita growth

"protection and enhancement of our historic environment." - In no way does the plan achieve this for Gawsworth. Lowes lane is a beautiful area and also home to some very old and historic cottages. These development plans will destroy the natural and historic environment.

CE council does a very poor job in advertising consultations. Most people who are affected never even hear about plans until it is too late. In addition, the window of opportunity for people to comment is very brief, usually weeks or at best a little over a month. I previously worked for CE council and I know that this has been the approach to consultations for decades. The length if time consultations are open for needs to be considerably expanded.

In addition, many people feel that these consultations are a formality and the decision has already been made. There is a real lack accountability to residents and what they want.

Section 3.3 to 3.7 outlines a national planning strategy that sets extensive housing targets and a standardised methodology for local councils. As stated previously, this approach fundamentally ignores the root cause of the increased housing demand, which is mass and uncontrolled immigration. The reliance on these targets isn’t a response to genuine local needs but a consequence of broader national policies that have driven population growth from external sources.

Although at risk of repeating myself, I feel I do have to re-iterate that we do not have a housing crisis, we have a population growth crisis driven entirely by immigration. Roughly 15 million people have entered the country since 1997, a significant proportion of whom are an economic drain.

To cater for this, we are now being asked to accept policies that will effectively sacrifice green belt protections. In addition, given local demand is weak, the housing targets will lead to large numbers of people moving into the area, transforming the nature and culture of our towns irreversibly. It is crucial to reconsider these sweeping targets and address the underlying factors driving the housing requirements.

The recent changes to the national planning system are set to place a substantial burden on local councils like Cheshire East. The methodology it uses relies heavily on broad estimates of population growth, the latter of which is almost entirely caused by immigration trends. In fact, it’s estimated that around 97% of the UK's population growth is linked to immigration. This means that local housing targets are being driven more by consistently bad immigration from successive governments and national-level projections rather than actual local needs.
The methodology that has been adopted for the national strategy is very much relies on back of the fag packet calculations in terms of predicting population and housing needs and exists solely for the purpose of catering for growth caused by migration.

In fact if we look at the data, the fertility rate in Cheshire East is currently around 1.6 children per woman. This means that over time there would be a natural decline in Cheshire East's population. Any national or local plan that was truly designed for the needs of the local area would therefore be looking at way of mitigating impacts of a declining population whilst attempting to boost birth rates. One such impact of the reduced population would be greater availability of housing due to the fall. It is therefore counterfactual to talk of increased ‘local need’ for housing. The reason we are having to sacrifice the green belt in addition to having to put up with radical demographic transformation in towns like Macclesfield is solely due to the misguided migration policies.

I would also like to point out that many new builds near to Lyme Green and near Henbury that have recently been completed are not selling, suggesting either a lack of demand or a mismatch in housing affordability between the "value" of the houses and what they are put up to market for, and what people are willing or able to pay for them. There is clear evidence that new builds in the area are surplus to requirements, and yet you plan to build more. It is illogical.

The proposed changes to green belt policy pose a serious threat to the character of our area. Allowing green belt boundaries to be redrawn to meet large-scale housing targets will inevitably lead to further loss of green belt land. This risks undermining the green belt’s original purpose of preventing urban sprawl and supporting well-defined, sustainable communities.

Given the scale of housing that national government is forcing CE council to sign up to, it is a logical inevitability that there will not be enough brownfield sites to meet the housing targets. This means it is a certainty that Greenfield sites will be used , and once they are gone, they are lost forever. In addition to greenfield sites, I strongly suspect that arable farmland or other open green spaces will be purchased to construct houses. The reasons why this is damaging have been referred to in earlier sections.

These housing pressures are not driven by local demand but by policies that have led to substantial population growth through mass immigration. As a result, the impact on our environment and the social fabric of our towns is deeply concerning

At the risk of sound facetious, the councils idea of economic growth is to grant permits to a new barber or kebab shop, or to sign up for an experimental C02 pipeline. I would much rather the council was less involved in economic planning unless there was a distinct need for it to do so.

The creation of the combined authority is a disaster for local residents. Just as the abolition of the borough councils made local government less effective, so will the creation of an even larger combined authority. Chesire's needs will be subordinated to Warrington's. In addition, its creation has also served to gerrymander the local boundary so that a Labour majority is more likely.

The 2021 census is woefully out of date due to the Boris wave. Towns like Macclesfield have been demographically transformed in just a handful of years. This is not a positive development.

I have touched on this in previous sections, but is is completely contradictory to talk about large scale building on green field/green open space environments in one sentence, and then to refer to the enhancement of the natural environment in the other. These are mutually exclusive objectives and it is dishonest to claim that this local plan protect or enhance the natural environment.

Carbon neutrality by 2045 is a target that has not been voted on by the residents of CE. The council has zero right or mandate to force this target on residents. It also has no right to green light large scale projects such as the CO2 pipeline which will irreversibly damage the natural environment and the local settlement's its passes through or nearby, just to meet these targets. If CE council wishes to be carbon neutral by 2045, it should consult its residents in a plebiscite in order to gain a mandate.