Full text:
Site MB08, Land off Ryecroft Lane, Mobberley
Purpose of this response
This response objects to the identification of site MB08 as a candidate housing site. It
focuses on a narrow point: whether the Council can defend this allocation on its own
evidence, given a recent appeal decision on aircraft noise in the same village.
I have family in Mobberley on Pavement Lane and know the area and its noise environment
well.
The point in short
An allocation at MB08 would be an allocation inside the 60 dB LAeq,16h daytime aircraft
noise contour. Cheshire East has argued at a public inquiry that this level constitutes the
Significant Observed Adverse Effect Level. It won that argument. An Inspector accepted it
and dismissed a 375 dwelling scheme in Mobberley on that basis. Nothing about the
acoustics has improved since. On the contrary, Manchester Airport has grown.
Carrying MB08 forward would require the Council to argue the opposite of what it has
previously argued, without any change in the underlying facts that would justify doing so.
That is a soundness risk for the plan, not merely a local objection.
The 2016 decision and why it governs this site
Appeal Ref APP/R0660/W/15/3027388 concerned land at the Harman Technology site, Ilford
Way, Mobberley. The Inspector's decision is dated 4 July 2016. It should be read in full by
anyone assessing MB08, but three findings are decisive.
Finding one: the noise level itself. The Inspector accepted 60 dB LAeq,16h as equating to
SOAEL, this being Cheshire East's own position, and categorised the proposed housing
accordingly. National policy, through the Noise Policy Statement for England and the
Planning Practice Guidance, states that significant adverse effects should be avoided. The
Aviation Policy Framework puts the onset of significant community annoyance at 57 dB. BS
8233:2014 sets a desirable ceiling of 55 dB for external amenity space. MB08 fails all three
benchmarks.
Finding two: mitigation does not work. The appellants proposed an extensive package for
external amenity areas: covered structures, enclosed and conservatory style garden rooms,
acoustic absorption, orientation of buildings to create acoustic shadow, and a designated
tranquillity zone within the open space. The Inspector rejected the package. He recorded
that no party at the inquiry could identify a single development anywhere in which
comparable measures had successfully mitigated aircraft noise in outdoor space. He further
found that the measures could not be secured by planning condition. He also treated the
sealed box approach to internal noise, which relies on residents keeping windows shut and
using mechanical ventilation, as a last resort that weighed against permission rather than as
a solution.
This matters for site selection. If external noise at these levels cannot be mitigated, then the
noise constraint on MB08 is absolute rather than something to be resolved at application
stage through conditions or a design code. A site whose principal constraint cannot be
conditioned away is not a developable site.
Finding three: housing need did not outweigh it. At the time of the decision the Council
could not demonstrate a five year housing land supply, the shortfall was described as
substantial, and the presumption in favour of sustainable development was engaged. The
scheme offered up to 375 homes including around 56 affordable homes. The Inspector
nonetheless found the noise harm overriding and dismissed the appeal.
I raise this because the counterargument to objections of this kind is usually that housing
need must prevail. That argument was run, and lost, in this village.
The evidence has moved in the wrong direction since
The 2016 decision was based on the 2014 noise contours. The Inspector expressly noted
that levels had already risen between 2012 and 2014, that Manchester Airport was operating
well below capacity, and that movements were likely to increase as terminal capacity
expanded.
That expectation has been borne out. Manchester Airport has since completed a major
transformation of its terminal capacity, and passenger and movement numbers are well
above 2014 levels.
The practical consequence is that a site assessed today against 2025 contours is being
assessed in a worse acoustic environment than the one that was already judged
unacceptable in 2016. Any assessment of MB08 that relies on older contour data, or that
treats the 2016 decision as historic, would be defective.
I would ask the Council to place the current published Manchester Airports Group contours
in the evidence base for this site, and to state explicitly which contour band MB08 falls
within.
Two further points
Runway and route geography. The relationship between MB08 and the airport is not
incidental. The site sits under the departure routes serving Runway 2, and the prevailing
wind means the large majority of departures leave to the south west over Mobberley.
Departures are markedly noisier than arrivals. This is the same geometry that applied to the
2016 appeal site, which lies less than a mile away.
Green Belt function. The Council's Mobberley Settlement Report identifies the Land off
Ryecroft Lane as making a major contribution to preventing the merging of Mobberley and
Knutsford, across a gap of under 700 metres. Exceptional circumstances are required to
release Green Belt land. Where the Council's own evidence records the land as strongly
performing a Green Belt purpose, and where the site carries an unresolvable noise
constraint on top of that, the case for release is not made out.
Conclusion and request
I ask that MB08 be removed from the pool of candidate housing sites at this stage rather
than carried forward for further assessment.
The reason is not that development is unwelcome in principle. It is that this particular site
has, in substance, already been examined. An Inspector has considered housing at these
noise levels in this village, has found the external noise environment incapable of mitigation,
and has dismissed the scheme despite acute housing need. Bringing MB08 forward would
invite the Council to be tested on that same question at examination, on worse noise data
than last time, and with its own previous evidence pointing against it.
Sarah Jacobs
