Local plan scoping consultation

1. Transport: buses, rail and active travel
Consultation paragraphs 5.91 to 5.95, and active travel at 5.112
Transport accessibility is the real test of whether a location is sustainable, and in this part of the borough it has been going backwards for fifty years. Bollington station closed in 1970 and was never replaced. The 391, 392 and 393 bus services were reduced from a ninety-minute to a two-hourly frequency, the 393 lost its Saturday service and Bollington Cross ceased to be served. Adlington station lost its Sunday trains in December 2024 under Northern's amended Sunday timetable, which still remains in force until further notice. Cheshire East's demand-responsive FlexiLink service is offered to residents who, in the Council's own words, live beyond the reach of any other public transport. That is a fair description of this parish.
The Middlewood Way and the Macclesfield Canal towpath lie about a mile to the west and are good routes, but there is no safe, continuous, lit way of reaching them, or Bollington, or the station, on foot or by bicycle from the village. Cheshire East's Local Cycling and Walking Infrastructure Plans presently cover Crewe, Congleton, Macclesfield and Wilmslow only, so the rural parishes sit outside that planning altogether. The new plan can close that gap.
• Adopt a transport-led approach to the location of growth, supported by settlement-level assessments of real journey times to work, school and health care, measured across the whole week rather than at peak hours.
• Require demonstrated public transport accessibility before any strategic allocation is made, and do not treat a proposed future service as equivalent to an existing one.
• Define what "development around stations" means for the purposes of paragraph 5.15, by a published accessibility standard covering walking-time catchment, service frequency, days of operation and step-free access. Without a published standard, the test will be applied inconsistently across the borough.
• Extend Local Cycling and Walking Infrastructure Plan coverage, or an equivalent standard of route planning, to the rural parishes, and identify the missing links between rural settlements, their nearest service centre and their nearest station.
• Model highway capacity on unclassified rural lanes and local distributor roads as well as on the A523 and the strategic network. In this part of the borough the constraint is the lane network, which is unlit, largely without footway and in places single track.
• Report bus provision as scheduled journeys per day and days of operation at parish level, and monitor it annually, so that service withdrawal is visible in the plan's evidence rather than discovered afterwards.
Policies: LPS CO 1, CO 2, CO 4; SADPD INF 1, INF 3; NPPF (August 2026) chapter 15 (TR1 to TR8), S2; Cheshire East Local Transport Plan and Local Cycling and Walking Infrastructure Plans.

2. Infrastructure, utilities and developer contributions
Consultation paragraphs 5.91 to 5.95
The Parish Council's central ask is simple: infrastructure capacity should decide where growth goes, rather than being negotiated afterwards. Pott Shrigley CofE Primary School had 26 pupils on roll against a capacity of 42 at the June 2026 school census. There is no surgery or pharmacy in the parish. Foul drainage and water supply in the eastern lanes are long-standing constraints. A contribution towards capacity that does not yet exist is not the same as capacity.
• Treat school, health, highway and utility capacity as a pre-condition of allocation. Where capacity does not exist and cannot be secured before first occupation, the location is not a sustainable one.
• Assess education capacity school by school, not against borough-wide averages, and require new places to exist or be secured with a stated delivery date before development begins.
• Assess health capacity at practice level using the Joint Strategic Needs Assessment and GP list data, and treat an existing shortfall as a constraint rather than a gap to be filled by contribution.
• Treat water supply and wastewater capacity as a pre-condition of allocation rather than a matter for planning condition, with United Utilities engaged at plan-making stage and capacity assessed catchment by catchment.
• Produce an Infrastructure Delivery Plan that names, for each requirement, the responsible body, the cost, the funding source and the delivery date.
• Set developer contributions out transparently and apply them consistently, expressing affordable housing as a single figure rather than a range as national policy requires, with clawback where contributions have been reduced on viability grounds and viability later improves.
Policies: LPS IN 1, IN 2, SC 3; SADPD GEN 7, INF 6, INF 9; NPPF (August 2026) PM12, chapter 16; Cheshire East Joint Strategic Needs Assessment.

4. Identifying and assessing sites
Consultation paragraphs 5.8 to 5.14
We make no comment on any site submitted through the call for sites. Our interest is in how sites will be assessed, which is properly a matter for this stage and is the most consequential thing the Council will settle in the coming months.
• Publish the site assessment methodology, and the criteria for identifying sites, for public consultation before they are applied.
• Include within those criteria accessibility by public transport, walking and cycling; the capacity of the particular schools, GP practices, roads and wastewater catchment that would serve the site; flood risk and drainage catchment; landscape character and the setting of protected landscapes; and the significance and setting of heritage assets.
• Assess brownfield land, vacant retail units and empty buildings in the towns before land outside settlement boundaries, and publish the results.
• Assess housing need at neighbourhood level. The capacity of a site is not evidence of need in the place where it happens to lie.
• Publish the assessment of each site with its scoring and reasoning, rather than an aggregated conclusion.
Policies: NPPF (August 2026) PM8, PM9, S2; LPS PG 1, SE 2; SADPD HOU 16.

5. Settlement hierarchy and spatial distribution
Consultation paragraphs 5.20 to 5.26
The hierarchy decides where growth goes and should rest on measured services rather than on population or distance from a town. We recognise the minimum local housing need of 2,530 dwellings a year at paragraph 5.48, and the most recently published supply position of 3.3 years at 31 March 2025. Our concern is with distribution, not with the requirement.
• Publish the Settlement Hierarchy Review methodology for consultation before the hierarchy is fixed.
• Score settlements on measured criteria: bus frequency, destinations and days of operation; distance to a station and the service at it; GP list capacity; capacity at the schools that actually serve the settlement; and whether a safe, continuous walking or cycling route to the nearest service centre exists.
• Confirm that a settlement cannot move up a tier because it is near a larger place, or near a proposed development, when it does not have the services that define that tier.
• Distribute growth by capacity rather than by land availability.
Policies: LPS PG 1, PG 2, PG 7; SADPD PG 8, PG 9; NPPF (August 2026) S2, PM1, PM8, HO2, HO3; consultation para 5.48.

6. Green Belt and green gaps
Consultation paragraphs 5.15 to 5.19
The parish sits in Green Belt at the southern edge of the Greater Manchester belt, alongside the National Park. Policy PG 5 designates four strategic green gaps and all four are around Crewe; local green gaps under SADPD Policy PG 13 are available only through neighbourhood plans, which a parish of 257 people cannot resource. As things stand the protection is open to larger settlements and closed to the smallest.
• Carry out the Green Belt assessment in accordance with NPPF Annex E and publish it parcel by parcel, with the methodology consulted on beforehand.
• Assess and exhaust every other reasonable option for meeting development needs before Green Belt release is contemplated, and document the reasoning so it can be tested at examination.
• Keep landscape, heritage and biodiversity value assessed independently of Green Belt purposes.
• Apply the strategic green gap test across the whole borough on the evidence, and allow local green gaps to be designated through the Local Plan itself on evidence from a parish council.
• Assess the risk of settlements merging into one another as a matter in its own right.
Policies: LPS PG 3, PG 5; SADPD PG 11, PG 12, PG 13; NPPF (August 2026) chapter 13 and Annex E; consultation paras 5.15 and 5.19.

7. Housing
Consultation paragraphs 5.30 to 5.64
We support housing that meets a real local need. The right housing keeps a village alive; housing placed where there is nothing to walk to does not.
• Keep a rural exception sites policy along the lines of Policy SC 6, so that genuinely affordable homes can be built for people with a local connection at a scale suited to the settlement.
• Support downsizer housing, self-build, conversion of existing buildings and small sites in rural settlements.
• Assess housing need at parish or output area level rather than grouping small parishes with larger neighbours. We welcome the Council's stated intention to use the smallest available output areas and ask that it is written into the plan.
• Address location as well as design in the policy on housing for older people, since accommodation built where nothing can be reached on foot does not serve an ageing rural population.
Policies: LPS SC 4, SC 5, SC 6, PG 6; SADPD HOU 1, HOU 2, HOU 3, HOU 15, HOU 16; NPPF (August 2026) HO1, HO5, HO8, HO9, HO10.

8. Town centres and brownfield land
Consultation paragraphs 5.70 to 5.75
We would like the towns to take the greater share of growth. Crewe, Macclesfield and Congleton have brownfield land, empty buildings and vacant retail floorspace, and they have the stations, buses, schools and surgeries that rural parishes do not. Directing growth there is better for the towns and better for the countryside.
• Give clear policy priority to town centre regeneration and to the re-use of previously developed land and empty property.
• Support higher densities within walking distance of stations and interchanges.
• Keep the brownfield land register current, and commission a published capacity study of vacant retail and employment floorspace in the larger towns, which the register does not presently capture.
Policies: LPS EG 5, SE 2, PG 1; SADPD RET 1, RET 7, RET 8, HOU 14; NPPF (August 2026) chapter 8 and chapter 12.

9. Natural environment and heritage
Consultation paragraphs 5.96 to 5.103 and 5.125 to 5.130
This is a landscape of ancient woodland, old enclosure and long views, part of it within the National Park and the remainder forming its setting. Around nineteen entries in the parish appear on the National Heritage List, and much of what makes them significant is that setting.
• Carry Policy SE 15 forward, so that development affecting the National Park and its setting continues to be assessed against the statutory purposes of the designation, and set out how Cheshire East will work with the National Park Authority where the boundary divides a parish, its conservation area or its community.
• Give full effect to the Cheshire and Warrington Local Nature Recovery Strategy, approved on 24 November 2025, in mapping habitat networks and assessing development.
• Include a landscape character assessment for the eastern fringe covering long views and tranquillity as well as habitat, and protect irreplaceable habitats including ancient woodland and peat.
• Carry forward and strengthen SADPD Policy ENV 14 on light pollution. Dark skies on this side of the borough are a real asset and are not recovered once lost.
• Assess heritage significance together with setting, maintain a local list of non-designated assets prepared with parish councils, and treat the Macclesfield Canal and its structures as a heritage corridor assessed as a whole.
Policies: LPS SE 3, SE 4, SE 7, SE 15; SADPD ENV 1 to ENV 3, ENV 14, HER 1, HER 3, HER 7; NPPF (August 2026) chapters 19 and 20, PM10, PM11; Cheshire and Warrington Local Nature Recovery Strategy.

10. Evidence base
Consultation paragraphs 5.139 to 5.145
National policy requires evidence that is relevant, proportionate and reliable. We ask that each study's methodology is published for comment before its conclusions are drawn, because an error of approach found afterwards cannot in practice be corrected.
• Highway modelling covering unclassified rural lanes and local distributor roads as well as the A523 and the strategic network.
• A wastewater and water resource capacity assessment prepared with United Utilities on a catchment basis.
• Education capacity reported school by school, and public transport provision reported as journeys per day at parish level.
• All data reported at the smallest available output area, so that small parishes are not aggregated away, and evidence prepared jointly with the National Park Authority where it concerns the National Park or its setting.
Policies: NPPF (August 2026) PM6, PM8, PM9, PM10, PM11, Annex E; LPS IN 1, IN 2.

11. Engagement
Consultation chapter 6
We want to help, and we have read the draft engagement strategy with that in mind. Town and parish councils appear in it once in substance, at paragraph 6.31 on the role of elected members, and again in the stakeholder list at 6.62. No method is set out for engaging them. We would also record, without labouring it, that this consultation ran from 21 July to 1 September, entirely within the period when parish councils do not meet, so that a council could not convene and resolve a response within the window.
• A distinct section on engagement with town and parish councils, setting out how and when they will be consulted and how their representations will be handled.
• Consultation periods of at least eight weeks, timed so that an ordinary parish council meeting falls within them, and a published forward timetable so that meetings can be arranged in advance.
• In-person events distributed across the borough. The Parish Council would be glad to host or co-host a session for the north-east of the borough at Pott Shrigley Village Hall.
• A published engagement log showing each parish and town council representation, how it was taken into account and what changed as a result.
• A standing liaison arrangement between Strategic Planning and parish councils at defined points in the programme, and joint working with the National Park Authority where a parish is divided by the boundary.
Policies: NPPF (August 2026) PM6, PM7; Town and Country Planning (Local Planning) (England) Regulations 2012, as amended, regulation 18; Cheshire East Statement of Community Involvement; Equality Act 2010, section 149.