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Local plan scoping consultation
Brownfield development
Representation ID: 4789
Received: 23/08/2026
Respondent: Ruth Bass
“I support new housing where it is genuinely needed, but I want Cheshire East to prioritise suitable brownfield land, properly account for existing planning permissions, provide genuinely affordable homes local people can buy, ensure infrastructure is available alongside development and demonstrate why any further Green Belt release is necessary.”
Then add whatever particularly concerns you about your own area.
🏚️ Brownfield first
🌳 Green Belt protected unless further release is genuinely necessary
🏠 Genuinely affordable homes local people can actually buy
📋 Existing planning permissions properly accounted for
🏗️ Answers about why permitted sites aren't being built faster
🚧 Infrastructure before or alongside development
🏫 Enough school places
🩺 Enough healthcare capacity
🚗 Roads that can cope
💧 Drainage and sewage systems that can cope
“I support new housing where it is genuinely needed, but I want Cheshire East to prioritise suitable brownfield land, properly account for existing planning permissions, provide genuinely affordable homes local people can buy, ensure infrastructure is available alongside development and demonstrate why any further Green Belt release is necessary.”
Then add whatever particularly concerns you about your own area.
💷 WHAT DOES “AFFORDABLE HOUSING” ACTUALLY MEAN?
Here's a real Macclesfield comparison.
An older two-bedroom terraced house on Timber Street is currently being marketed on the open market for:
£149,950 — FOR 100% OF THE HOUSE
Now compare that with a new two-bedroom shared-ownership home at Heron View, offered as an affordable route into home ownership.
The headline advertised price is:
£75,625
That sounds dramatically cheaper.
But £75,625 doesn't buy the house.
It buys:
25% OF A PROPERTY VALUED AT £302,500
The buyer then has a mortgage on the 25% they purchase and pays rent on the remaining 75%, together with the applicable charges.
Using the figures advertised for this particular property:
Mortgage illustration: around £416 per month
Rent: £519.92 per month
Service charge: £35.85 per month
Management fee: £10 per month
That's approximately:
£982 PER MONTH
before council tax, gas, electricity, water, insurance and other household costs.
Compare that with the older Timber Street terrace:
TIMBER STREET
🏠 Price: £149,950
🔑 Ownership: 100%
💷 Illustrative mortgage previously shown: around £752 per month
HERON VIEW
🏠 Full property value: £302,500
💷 Initial purchase: £75,625
🔑 Ownership: 25%
💷 Approximate mortgage + rent + listed charges: £982 per month
The mortgage examples aren't directly like-for-like because deposits, mortgage rates and terms can differ.
But the fundamental comparison remains:
£149,950 BUYS AN ENTIRE EXISTING HOUSE.
£75,625 BUYS 25% OF THE NEW ONE.
And there's another important difference.
If the shared owner later moves while still owning 25%, they don't suddenly have the value of the whole property available for their next purchase. Their interest is their share, after taking account of their mortgage and selling costs.
They can potentially buy further shares through “staircasing”, but those additional shares have to be purchased.
Shared ownership can absolutely help some people and we're not knocking people who choose it.
But it isn't the same thing as building a genuinely inexpensive house that a first-time buyer can purchase outright.
🏠 SO WHY AREN'T WE BUILDING REAL FIRST-TIME BUYER HOMES?
If an existing two-bedroom Macclesfield terrace can be marketed on the open market for around £150,000, why shouldn't major new developments include smaller, simpler homes specifically aimed at first-time buyers at around that sort of price?
Not £300,000+ properties where £75,000 buys a quarter.
But:
A HOME COSTING AROUND £150,000 — FOR THE WHOLE HOME.
There is already a Government mechanism demonstrating that discounted outright ownership is possible.
Under First Homes, qualifying first-time buyers can purchase properties at a discount to market value, with the discount remaining attached to the property for future qualifying purchasers.
So why shouldn't Cheshire East investigate through its new Local Plan whether major developments should provide a meaningful proportion of:
GENUINE FIRST-TIME BUYER HOMES
OWNED OUTRIGHT
TARGETED AT AROUND £150,000 OR LESS WHERE LOCAL EVIDENCE SUPPORTS IT
If we're going to allocate land for thousands more houses, surely one of the most important questions is:
HOW MANY OF THOSE HOMES WILL A LOCAL YOUNG PERSON ACTUALLY BE ABLE TO BUY?
That's a much more useful affordability test than simply counting how many properties meet a technical definition of “affordable”.
WHAT DOES THE BUYER ACTUALLY PAY — AND WHAT DO THEY ACTUALLY OWN?
🏚️ BROWNFIELD FIRST
Before more countryside or Green Belt is considered for development, Cheshire East should give residents some straightforward answers.
How much suitable brownfield land is available?
How many homes could realistically be built on it?
How much brownfield land already has planning permission?
How much previously developed or allocated land remains unused?
Where brownfield sites aren't progressing, why not?
Not every brownfield site will be suitable for housing.
But surely the sensible order is:
1️⃣ Use existing planning permissions
2️⃣ Maximise realistic brownfield opportunities
3️⃣ Use suitable underused and redevelopment land
4️⃣ Only then consider whether more Green Belt or countryside is necessary
And residents are entitled to ask:
ARE SOME GREENFIELD SITES SIMPLY EASIER OR MORE COMMERCIALLY ATTRACTIVE TO DEVELOP THAN DIFFICULT BROWNFIELD SITES?
The Local Plan should be about what our communities need, not simply which land is easiest to develop.
🌳 WHAT ABOUT THE GREEN BELT?
The current Local Plan already released Green Belt land for housing.
In some locations, replacement Green Belt boundaries were specifically intended to endure in the long term.
We're now preparing another Local Plan.
So if we're considering crossing those boundaries again:
WHAT HAS MATERIALLY CHANGED?
Before more Green Belt is permanently lost, Cheshire East should demonstrate:
• what realistic brownfield alternatives exist;
• how many existing permissions remain unbuilt;
• why existing sites aren't delivering quickly enough;
• whether infrastructure has capacity; and
• why further Green Belt release is genuinely necessary.
We're not saying never build on Green Belt.
We're saying:
BROWNFIELD FIRST — AND PROVE THE NEED BEFORE LOSING MORE GREEN BELT.
🏗️ CHESHIRE EAST HAS ONLY A 3.3-YEAR HOUSING SUPPLY — BUT WHAT DOES THAT ACTUALLY MEAN?
Cheshire East's latest published assessment identifies:
8,780 deliverable homes
against a five-year requirement of:
13,162 homes
That produces a calculated five-year shortfall of:
4,382 HOMES
and a housing land supply of approximately:
3.3 YEARS
That is important.
But a 3.3-year housing land supply does NOT mean Cheshire East has only 3.3 years' worth of land with planning permission.
The calculation is about how many homes CEC considers deliverable within the five-year period.
There are also homes with planning permission which aren't expected to be completed within that five-year window.
And that creates a very important distinction between:
LAND WITH PLANNING PERMISSION
and
HOUSES ACTUALLY BEING DELIVERED QUICKLY ENOUGH
So perhaps the most important question is:
DO WE HAVE A LAND SHORTAGE — OR A DELIVERY PROBLEM?
Before releasing more Green Belt or greenfield land, Cheshire East should put three simple figures side-by-side:
🏠 How many homes already have planning permission?
🏗️ How many of those are expected to be completed within five years?
⏳ How many permitted homes will take longer — and why?
If thousands of homes already have permission but aren't expected to be built quickly enough to count towards the five-year supply, simply allocating more land doesn't necessarily solve the underlying problem.
🏠 AND WHAT ABOUT THE GOVERNMENT'S 1.5 MILLION HOMES?
You've probably heard about the Government's ambition to deliver 1.5 million homes during this Parliament.
Here's something important:
THAT ISN'T 1.5 MILLION EXTRA HOMES ON TOP OF EVERYTHING THAT ALREADY HAS PLANNING PERMISSION.
Homes which already have planning permission can contribute towards that national total when they are actually completed during this Parliament.
So again, the question shouldn't simply be:
“HOW MUCH MORE LAND CAN WE ALLOCATE?”
It should also be:
“WHY AREN'T WE BUILDING THE HOMES THAT ALREADY HAVE PERMISSION?”
The Competition and Markets Authority has also examined housebuilders' build-out rates and the importance of local “absorption rates” — broadly, how quickly new homes can be sold into a local market without reducing prevailing prices.
Allocating more land therefore doesn't automatically mean houses will be built more quickly.
Before permanently releasing more countryside, residents deserve to understand whether we're principally dealing with:
a shortage of suitable land,
a shortage of permissions,
slow build-out,
infrastructure constraints,
market conditions,
or a combination of them.
📈 WERE THE LAST LOCAL PLAN'S GROWTH ASSUMPTIONS RIGHT?
The current Local Plan deliberately pursued an ambitious growth strategy.
There were people at the time who questioned whether some of those growth expectations were realistic.
We don't need to rerun that argument.
We now have something far more useful:
ACTUAL RESULTS.
Before another set of forecasts determines how many homes and how much land Cheshire East needs for decades to come, CEC should publish a simple scorecard:
WHAT WAS FORECAST — AND WHAT ACTUALLY HAPPENED?
Population growth.
Employment growth.
Jobs.
Housing completions.
Affordable housing.
Infrastructure.
If the previous forecasts proved accurate, show us.
If actual growth was materially different, explain why — and explain how that experience has influenced the assumptions being used this time.
Because getting a forecast wrong doesn't merely produce an inaccurate spreadsheet.
IT CAN AFFECT HOW MUCH LAND IS IDENTIFIED FOR DEVELOPMENT.
🚧 WHAT HAPPENED TO THE INFRASTRUCTURE?
Thousands of homes have been built under the current Local Plan.
But has everything else kept pace?
Schools?
Doctors and healthcare?
Roads?
Public transport?
Drainage?
Sewage capacity?
Don't assume another huge housing development automatically means a new school, GP surgery or major road improvement will appear alongside it.
Developers can apply to vary or remove planning conditions, and planning obligations can sometimes be renegotiated.
So Cheshire East should publish:
HOW MANY INFRASTRUCTURE REQUIREMENTS DURING THE CURRENT LOCAL PLAN PERIOD WERE LATER REMOVED, REDUCED, DEFERRED OR ALTERED?
How many involved highways?
Education?
Affordable housing?
Open space?
Community facilities?
How many were changed following viability arguments?
And what was the value of the infrastructure originally expected compared with what was ultimately delivered?
Because there's an enormous difference between saying:
“THIS DEVELOPMENT WILL COME WITH INFRASTRUCTURE”
and being able to say years later:
“THIS IS WHAT WAS ACTUALLY DELIVERED.”
🏫 SCHOOLS — CHESHIRE EAST ALREADY KNEW THERE WAS A RISK
Education provides a particularly useful example.
When the current Local Plan was being prepared, Cheshire East's own infrastructure evidence estimated that approved developments and Local Plan sites in Macclesfield could generate demand for approximately:
679 ADDITIONAL PRIMARY PLACES
and
536 ADDITIONAL SECONDARY PLACES
The Council described the situation as presenting a:
“HIGH RISK FOR THE LOCAL AUTHORITY.”
So this issue was known before the houses were built.
🏫 RESIDENTS WERE RAISING THIS IN 2018
In 2018 Henbury Parish Council challenged the cumulative education impact of three major developments around Chelford Road and Whirley Road.
CEC confirmed that education contributions being sought from those developments collectively amounted to:
£802,625 — Primary education
£947,875 — Secondary education
£227,500 — SEN education
TOTAL: £1,978,000
CEC said it was working with schools to determine where additional capacity should be created.
So the important question now isn't:
“WERE CONTRIBUTIONS REQUESTED?”
It's:
“WHAT WAS ACTUALLY DELIVERED, WHERE AND WHEN?”
🚌 WHERE DID THE CHILDREN GO?
Tytherington High School was subsequently expanded.
CEC's later information records 150 additional places through six additional classrooms, completed in September 2022.
That came more than four years after residents were asking where the additional children generated by these developments would actually go.
And look at the September 2026 admissions figures:
FALLIBROOME
240 places — 240 allocated
TYTHERINGTON
240 places — 240 allocated
MACCLESFIELD ACADEMY
120 places — 98 allocated
That illustrates why saying:
“There are some spare school places somewhere in Macclesfield”
isn't necessarily the same as:
“There are school places close to where the new families actually live.”
We should know:
Which schools do children from the new developments actually attend?
How far are they travelling?
Were additional places available when the houses were occupied?
Has home-to-school transport had to be provided because appropriate local places weren't available?
And, if so:
What has that cost?
🚦 WEAVER GREEN & BROKEN CROSS — SHOW US THE PAPERWORK
The Weaver Green planning permission contained a condition requiring the Broken Cross highway improvements to be completed to the:
“FULL WRITTEN SATISFACTION OF THE LOCAL PLANNING AUTHORITY”
BEFORE THE FIRST DWELLING WAS OCCUPIED.
Bellway subsequently applied to remove that condition.
That application was later withdrawn.
Residents were raising concerns in 2023 about homes apparently being occupied while issues at Broken Cross were still being raised.
Rather than make allegations without the paperwork, there's a very simple question:
SHOW US THE DOCUMENT AND THE DATE.
When did Cheshire East give its written satisfaction that the Broken Cross works required by Condition 6 were complete?
And:
WAS THAT BEFORE THE FIRST WEAVER GREEN RESIDENT MOVED IN?
If everything happened exactly as the planning permission required, that should be straightforward to answer.
Planning conditions exist for a reason.
If infrastructure is important enough to require it before occupation, residents should be able to expect that condition to mean something.
📋 AND THEN THERE'S SECTION 106
Cheshire East's own Internal Audit examined its arrangements for managing and monitoring Section 106 developer agreements and contributions.
Its overall assurance opinion was:
“NO ASSURANCE”
The Council subsequently began work to improve those arrangements.
But before another wave of major development, residents deserve to know:
WHAT WAS PROMISED?
WHAT WAS SECURED?
WHAT WAS LATER CHANGED?
WHAT WAS ACTUALLY DELIVERED?
AND WHEN DID IT ARRIVE RELATIVE TO THE HOUSES?
Developer contributions on a spreadsheet are not infrastructure.
A school place is infrastructure.
A completed road improvement is infrastructure.
A functioning drainage and sewage system is infrastructure.
Healthcare capacity is infrastructure.
❓ SO BEFORE WE RELEASE ANOTHER GENERATION OF LAND...
Let's properly examine what happened last time.
Did population and employment growth match the forecasts?
How many existing permissions remain unbuilt?
Why aren't all permitted sites delivering at the expected rate?
How much realistic brownfield capacity remains?
How much Green Belt was released?
How many genuinely lower-cost homes were actually produced?
How much developer infrastructure was originally promised?
How much was subsequently changed?
How much was actually delivered?
Were school places available when families moved in?
Did road improvements arrive when they were supposed to?
Did healthcare, drainage and sewage capacity keep pace?
These aren't anti-development questions.
Sent from Ru x
Comment
Local plan scoping consultation
Affordable housing
Representation ID: 4790
Received: 23/08/2026
Respondent: Ruth Bass
This commentary questions whether shared ownership should be regarded as genuinely affordable housing. Using examples from Macclesfield, it notes that a £149,950 terraced house can be bought outright, whereas a shared-ownership home requires purchasing a 25% share (£75,625) while also paying rent and other charges, resulting in monthly costs of around £982. It argues that shared ownership can help some buyers but is not equivalent to owning a low-cost home outright. The piece calls on Cheshire East to explore delivering more genuinely affordable first-time buyer homes, potentially around £150,000, through the Local Plan, rather than relying primarily on shared-ownership products.
🏚️ Brownfield first
🌳 Green Belt protected unless further release is genuinely necessary
🏠 Genuinely affordable homes local people can actually buy
📋 Existing planning permissions properly accounted for
🏗️ Answers about why permitted sites aren't being built faster
🚧 Infrastructure before or alongside development
🏫 Enough school places
🩺 Enough healthcare capacity
🚗 Roads that can cope
💧 Drainage and sewage systems that can cope
“I support new housing where it is genuinely needed, but I want Cheshire East to prioritise suitable brownfield land, properly account for existing planning permissions, provide genuinely affordable homes local people can buy, ensure infrastructure is available alongside development and demonstrate why any further Green Belt release is necessary.”
Then add whatever particularly concerns you about your own area.
💷 WHAT DOES “AFFORDABLE HOUSING” ACTUALLY MEAN?
Here's a real Macclesfield comparison.
An older two-bedroom terraced house on Timber Street is currently being marketed on the open market for:
£149,950 — FOR 100% OF THE HOUSE
Now compare that with a new two-bedroom shared-ownership home at Heron View, offered as an affordable route into home ownership.
The headline advertised price is:
£75,625
That sounds dramatically cheaper.
But £75,625 doesn't buy the house.
It buys:
25% OF A PROPERTY VALUED AT £302,500
The buyer then has a mortgage on the 25% they purchase and pays rent on the remaining 75%, together with the applicable charges.
Using the figures advertised for this particular property:
Mortgage illustration: around £416 per month
Rent: £519.92 per month
Service charge: £35.85 per month
Management fee: £10 per month
That's approximately:
£982 PER MONTH
before council tax, gas, electricity, water, insurance and other household costs.
Compare that with the older Timber Street terrace:
TIMBER STREET
🏠 Price: £149,950
🔑 Ownership: 100%
💷 Illustrative mortgage previously shown: around £752 per month
HERON VIEW
🏠 Full property value: £302,500
💷 Initial purchase: £75,625
🔑 Ownership: 25%
💷 Approximate mortgage + rent + listed charges: £982 per month
The mortgage examples aren't directly like-for-like because deposits, mortgage rates and terms can differ.
But the fundamental comparison remains:
£149,950 BUYS AN ENTIRE EXISTING HOUSE.
£75,625 BUYS 25% OF THE NEW ONE.
And there's another important difference.
If the shared owner later moves while still owning 25%, they don't suddenly have the value of the whole property available for their next purchase. Their interest is their share, after taking account of their mortgage and selling costs.
They can potentially buy further shares through “staircasing”, but those additional shares have to be purchased.
Shared ownership can absolutely help some people and we're not knocking people who choose it.
But it isn't the same thing as building a genuinely inexpensive house that a first-time buyer can purchase outright.
🏠 SO WHY AREN'T WE BUILDING REAL FIRST-TIME BUYER HOMES?
If an existing two-bedroom Macclesfield terrace can be marketed on the open market for around £150,000, why shouldn't major new developments include smaller, simpler homes specifically aimed at first-time buyers at around that sort of price?
Not £300,000+ properties where £75,000 buys a quarter.
But:
A HOME COSTING AROUND £150,000 — FOR THE WHOLE HOME.
There is already a Government mechanism demonstrating that discounted outright ownership is possible.
Under First Homes, qualifying first-time buyers can purchase properties at a discount to market value, with the discount remaining attached to the property for future qualifying purchasers.
So why shouldn't Cheshire East investigate through its new Local Plan whether major developments should provide a meaningful proportion of:
GENUINE FIRST-TIME BUYER HOMES
OWNED OUTRIGHT
TARGETED AT AROUND £150,000 OR LESS WHERE LOCAL EVIDENCE SUPPORTS IT
If we're going to allocate land for thousands more houses, surely one of the most important questions is:
HOW MANY OF THOSE HOMES WILL A LOCAL YOUNG PERSON ACTUALLY BE ABLE TO BUY?
That's a much more useful affordability test than simply counting how many properties meet a technical definition of “affordable”.
WHAT DOES THE BUYER ACTUALLY PAY — AND WHAT DO THEY ACTUALLY OWN?
🏚️ BROWNFIELD FIRST
Before more countryside or Green Belt is considered for development, Cheshire East should give residents some straightforward answers.
How much suitable brownfield land is available?
How many homes could realistically be built on it?
How much brownfield land already has planning permission?
How much previously developed or allocated land remains unused?
Where brownfield sites aren't progressing, why not?
Not every brownfield site will be suitable for housing.
But surely the sensible order is:
1️⃣ Use existing planning permissions
2️⃣ Maximise realistic brownfield opportunities
3️⃣ Use suitable underused and redevelopment land
4️⃣ Only then consider whether more Green Belt or countryside is necessary
And residents are entitled to ask:
ARE SOME GREENFIELD SITES SIMPLY EASIER OR MORE COMMERCIALLY ATTRACTIVE TO DEVELOP THAN DIFFICULT BROWNFIELD SITES?
The Local Plan should be about what our communities need, not simply which land is easiest to develop.
🌳 WHAT ABOUT THE GREEN BELT?
The current Local Plan already released Green Belt land for housing.
In some locations, replacement Green Belt boundaries were specifically intended to endure in the long term.
We're now preparing another Local Plan.
So if we're considering crossing those boundaries again:
WHAT HAS MATERIALLY CHANGED?
Before more Green Belt is permanently lost, Cheshire East should demonstrate:
• what realistic brownfield alternatives exist;
• how many existing permissions remain unbuilt;
• why existing sites aren't delivering quickly enough;
• whether infrastructure has capacity; and
• why further Green Belt release is genuinely necessary.
We're not saying never build on Green Belt.
We're saying:
BROWNFIELD FIRST — AND PROVE THE NEED BEFORE LOSING MORE GREEN BELT.
🏗️ CHESHIRE EAST HAS ONLY A 3.3-YEAR HOUSING SUPPLY — BUT WHAT DOES THAT ACTUALLY MEAN?
Cheshire East's latest published assessment identifies:
8,780 deliverable homes
against a five-year requirement of:
13,162 homes
That produces a calculated five-year shortfall of:
4,382 HOMES
and a housing land supply of approximately:
3.3 YEARS
That is important.
But a 3.3-year housing land supply does NOT mean Cheshire East has only 3.3 years' worth of land with planning permission.
The calculation is about how many homes CEC considers deliverable within the five-year period.
There are also homes with planning permission which aren't expected to be completed within that five-year window.
And that creates a very important distinction between:
LAND WITH PLANNING PERMISSION
and
HOUSES ACTUALLY BEING DELIVERED QUICKLY ENOUGH
So perhaps the most important question is:
DO WE HAVE A LAND SHORTAGE — OR A DELIVERY PROBLEM?
Before releasing more Green Belt or greenfield land, Cheshire East should put three simple figures side-by-side:
🏠 How many homes already have planning permission?
🏗️ How many of those are expected to be completed within five years?
⏳ How many permitted homes will take longer — and why?
If thousands of homes already have permission but aren't expected to be built quickly enough to count towards the five-year supply, simply allocating more land doesn't necessarily solve the underlying problem.
🏠 AND WHAT ABOUT THE GOVERNMENT'S 1.5 MILLION HOMES?
You've probably heard about the Government's ambition to deliver 1.5 million homes during this Parliament.
Here's something important:
THAT ISN'T 1.5 MILLION EXTRA HOMES ON TOP OF EVERYTHING THAT ALREADY HAS PLANNING PERMISSION.
Homes which already have planning permission can contribute towards that national total when they are actually completed during this Parliament.
So again, the question shouldn't simply be:
“HOW MUCH MORE LAND CAN WE ALLOCATE?”
It should also be:
“WHY AREN'T WE BUILDING THE HOMES THAT ALREADY HAVE PERMISSION?”
The Competition and Markets Authority has also examined housebuilders' build-out rates and the importance of local “absorption rates” — broadly, how quickly new homes can be sold into a local market without reducing prevailing prices.
Allocating more land therefore doesn't automatically mean houses will be built more quickly.
Before permanently releasing more countryside, residents deserve to understand whether we're principally dealing with:
a shortage of suitable land,
a shortage of permissions,
slow build-out,
infrastructure constraints,
market conditions,
or a combination of them.
📈 WERE THE LAST LOCAL PLAN'S GROWTH ASSUMPTIONS RIGHT?
The current Local Plan deliberately pursued an ambitious growth strategy.
There were people at the time who questioned whether some of those growth expectations were realistic.
We don't need to rerun that argument.
We now have something far more useful:
ACTUAL RESULTS.
Before another set of forecasts determines how many homes and how much land Cheshire East needs for decades to come, CEC should publish a simple scorecard:
WHAT WAS FORECAST — AND WHAT ACTUALLY HAPPENED?
Population growth.
Employment growth.
Jobs.
Housing completions.
Affordable housing.
Infrastructure.
If the previous forecasts proved accurate, show us.
If actual growth was materially different, explain why — and explain how that experience has influenced the assumptions being used this time.
Because getting a forecast wrong doesn't merely produce an inaccurate spreadsheet.
IT CAN AFFECT HOW MUCH LAND IS IDENTIFIED FOR DEVELOPMENT.
🚧 WHAT HAPPENED TO THE INFRASTRUCTURE?
Thousands of homes have been built under the current Local Plan.
But has everything else kept pace?
Schools?
Doctors and healthcare?
Roads?
Public transport?
Drainage?
Sewage capacity?
Don't assume another huge housing development automatically means a new school, GP surgery or major road improvement will appear alongside it.
Developers can apply to vary or remove planning conditions, and planning obligations can sometimes be renegotiated.
So Cheshire East should publish:
HOW MANY INFRASTRUCTURE REQUIREMENTS DURING THE CURRENT LOCAL PLAN PERIOD WERE LATER REMOVED, REDUCED, DEFERRED OR ALTERED?
How many involved highways?
Education?
Affordable housing?
Open space?
Community facilities?
How many were changed following viability arguments?
And what was the value of the infrastructure originally expected compared with what was ultimately delivered?
Because there's an enormous difference between saying:
“THIS DEVELOPMENT WILL COME WITH INFRASTRUCTURE”
and being able to say years later:
“THIS IS WHAT WAS ACTUALLY DELIVERED.”
🏫 SCHOOLS — CHESHIRE EAST ALREADY KNEW THERE WAS A RISK
Education provides a particularly useful example.
When the current Local Plan was being prepared, Cheshire East's own infrastructure evidence estimated that approved developments and Local Plan sites in Macclesfield could generate demand for approximately:
679 ADDITIONAL PRIMARY PLACES
and
536 ADDITIONAL SECONDARY PLACES
The Council described the situation as presenting a:
“HIGH RISK FOR THE LOCAL AUTHORITY.”
So this issue was known before the houses were built.
🏫 RESIDENTS WERE RAISING THIS IN 2018
In 2018 Henbury Parish Council challenged the cumulative education impact of three major developments around Chelford Road and Whirley Road.
CEC confirmed that education contributions being sought from those developments collectively amounted to:
£802,625 — Primary education
£947,875 — Secondary education
£227,500 — SEN education
TOTAL: £1,978,000
CEC said it was working with schools to determine where additional capacity should be created.
So the important question now isn't:
“WERE CONTRIBUTIONS REQUESTED?”
It's:
“WHAT WAS ACTUALLY DELIVERED, WHERE AND WHEN?”
🚌 WHERE DID THE CHILDREN GO?
Tytherington High School was subsequently expanded.
CEC's later information records 150 additional places through six additional classrooms, completed in September 2022.
That came more than four years after residents were asking where the additional children generated by these developments would actually go.
And look at the September 2026 admissions figures:
FALLIBROOME
240 places — 240 allocated
TYTHERINGTON
240 places — 240 allocated
MACCLESFIELD ACADEMY
120 places — 98 allocated
That illustrates why saying:
“There are some spare school places somewhere in Macclesfield”
isn't necessarily the same as:
“There are school places close to where the new families actually live.”
We should know:
Which schools do children from the new developments actually attend?
How far are they travelling?
Were additional places available when the houses were occupied?
Has home-to-school transport had to be provided because appropriate local places weren't available?
And, if so:
What has that cost?
🚦 WEAVER GREEN & BROKEN CROSS — SHOW US THE PAPERWORK
The Weaver Green planning permission contained a condition requiring the Broken Cross highway improvements to be completed to the:
“FULL WRITTEN SATISFACTION OF THE LOCAL PLANNING AUTHORITY”
BEFORE THE FIRST DWELLING WAS OCCUPIED.
Bellway subsequently applied to remove that condition.
That application was later withdrawn.
Residents were raising concerns in 2023 about homes apparently being occupied while issues at Broken Cross were still being raised.
Rather than make allegations without the paperwork, there's a very simple question:
SHOW US THE DOCUMENT AND THE DATE.
When did Cheshire East give its written satisfaction that the Broken Cross works required by Condition 6 were complete?
And:
WAS THAT BEFORE THE FIRST WEAVER GREEN RESIDENT MOVED IN?
If everything happened exactly as the planning permission required, that should be straightforward to answer.
Planning conditions exist for a reason.
If infrastructure is important enough to require it before occupation, residents should be able to expect that condition to mean something.
📋 AND THEN THERE'S SECTION 106
Cheshire East's own Internal Audit examined its arrangements for managing and monitoring Section 106 developer agreements and contributions.
Its overall assurance opinion was:
“NO ASSURANCE”
The Council subsequently began work to improve those arrangements.
But before another wave of major development, residents deserve to know:
WHAT WAS PROMISED?
WHAT WAS SECURED?
WHAT WAS LATER CHANGED?
WHAT WAS ACTUALLY DELIVERED?
AND WHEN DID IT ARRIVE RELATIVE TO THE HOUSES?
Developer contributions on a spreadsheet are not infrastructure.
A school place is infrastructure.
A completed road improvement is infrastructure.
A functioning drainage and sewage system is infrastructure.
Healthcare capacity is infrastructure.
❓ SO BEFORE WE RELEASE ANOTHER GENERATION OF LAND...
Let's properly examine what happened last time.
Did population and employment growth match the forecasts?
How many existing permissions remain unbuilt?
Why aren't all permitted sites delivering at the expected rate?
How much realistic brownfield capacity remains?
How much Green Belt was released?
How many genuinely lower-cost homes were actually produced?
How much developer infrastructure was originally promised?
How much was subsequently changed?
How much was actually delivered?
Were school places available when families moved in?
Did road improvements arrive when they were supposed to?
Did healthcare, drainage and sewage capacity keep pace?
These aren't anti-development questions.
Sent from Ru x
Comment
Local plan scoping consultation
Identifying and assessing sites
Representation ID: 4791
Received: 23/08/2026
Respondent: Ruth Bass
🏚️ BROWNFIELD FIRST
Before more countryside or Green Belt is considered for development, Cheshire East should give residents some straightforward answers.
How much suitable brownfield land is available?
How many homes could realistically be built on it?
How much brownfield land already has planning permission?
How much previously developed or allocated land remains unused?
Where brownfield sites aren't progressing, why not?
Not every brownfield site will be suitable for housing.
But surely the sensible order is:
1️⃣ Use existing planning permissions
2️⃣ Maximise realistic brownfield opportunities
3️⃣ Use suitable underused and redevelopment land
4️⃣ Only then consider whether more Green Belt or countryside is necessary
And residents are entitled to ask:
ARE SOME GREENFIELD SITES SIMPLY EASIER OR MORE COMMERCIALLY ATTRACTIVE TO DEVELOP THAN DIFFICULT BROWNFIELD SITES?
The Local Plan should be about what our communities need, not simply which land is easiest to develop.
🏚️ Brownfield first
🌳 Green Belt protected unless further release is genuinely necessary
🏠 Genuinely affordable homes local people can actually buy
📋 Existing planning permissions properly accounted for
🏗️ Answers about why permitted sites aren't being built faster
🚧 Infrastructure before or alongside development
🏫 Enough school places
🩺 Enough healthcare capacity
🚗 Roads that can cope
💧 Drainage and sewage systems that can cope
“I support new housing where it is genuinely needed, but I want Cheshire East to prioritise suitable brownfield land, properly account for existing planning permissions, provide genuinely affordable homes local people can buy, ensure infrastructure is available alongside development and demonstrate why any further Green Belt release is necessary.”
Then add whatever particularly concerns you about your own area.
💷 WHAT DOES “AFFORDABLE HOUSING” ACTUALLY MEAN?
Here's a real Macclesfield comparison.
An older two-bedroom terraced house on Timber Street is currently being marketed on the open market for:
£149,950 — FOR 100% OF THE HOUSE
Now compare that with a new two-bedroom shared-ownership home at Heron View, offered as an affordable route into home ownership.
The headline advertised price is:
£75,625
That sounds dramatically cheaper.
But £75,625 doesn't buy the house.
It buys:
25% OF A PROPERTY VALUED AT £302,500
The buyer then has a mortgage on the 25% they purchase and pays rent on the remaining 75%, together with the applicable charges.
Using the figures advertised for this particular property:
Mortgage illustration: around £416 per month
Rent: £519.92 per month
Service charge: £35.85 per month
Management fee: £10 per month
That's approximately:
£982 PER MONTH
before council tax, gas, electricity, water, insurance and other household costs.
Compare that with the older Timber Street terrace:
TIMBER STREET
🏠 Price: £149,950
🔑 Ownership: 100%
💷 Illustrative mortgage previously shown: around £752 per month
HERON VIEW
🏠 Full property value: £302,500
💷 Initial purchase: £75,625
🔑 Ownership: 25%
💷 Approximate mortgage + rent + listed charges: £982 per month
The mortgage examples aren't directly like-for-like because deposits, mortgage rates and terms can differ.
But the fundamental comparison remains:
£149,950 BUYS AN ENTIRE EXISTING HOUSE.
£75,625 BUYS 25% OF THE NEW ONE.
And there's another important difference.
If the shared owner later moves while still owning 25%, they don't suddenly have the value of the whole property available for their next purchase. Their interest is their share, after taking account of their mortgage and selling costs.
They can potentially buy further shares through “staircasing”, but those additional shares have to be purchased.
Shared ownership can absolutely help some people and we're not knocking people who choose it.
But it isn't the same thing as building a genuinely inexpensive house that a first-time buyer can purchase outright.
🏠 SO WHY AREN'T WE BUILDING REAL FIRST-TIME BUYER HOMES?
If an existing two-bedroom Macclesfield terrace can be marketed on the open market for around £150,000, why shouldn't major new developments include smaller, simpler homes specifically aimed at first-time buyers at around that sort of price?
Not £300,000+ properties where £75,000 buys a quarter.
But:
A HOME COSTING AROUND £150,000 — FOR THE WHOLE HOME.
There is already a Government mechanism demonstrating that discounted outright ownership is possible.
Under First Homes, qualifying first-time buyers can purchase properties at a discount to market value, with the discount remaining attached to the property for future qualifying purchasers.
So why shouldn't Cheshire East investigate through its new Local Plan whether major developments should provide a meaningful proportion of:
GENUINE FIRST-TIME BUYER HOMES
OWNED OUTRIGHT
TARGETED AT AROUND £150,000 OR LESS WHERE LOCAL EVIDENCE SUPPORTS IT
If we're going to allocate land for thousands more houses, surely one of the most important questions is:
HOW MANY OF THOSE HOMES WILL A LOCAL YOUNG PERSON ACTUALLY BE ABLE TO BUY?
That's a much more useful affordability test than simply counting how many properties meet a technical definition of “affordable”.
WHAT DOES THE BUYER ACTUALLY PAY — AND WHAT DO THEY ACTUALLY OWN?
🏚️ BROWNFIELD FIRST
Before more countryside or Green Belt is considered for development, Cheshire East should give residents some straightforward answers.
How much suitable brownfield land is available?
How many homes could realistically be built on it?
How much brownfield land already has planning permission?
How much previously developed or allocated land remains unused?
Where brownfield sites aren't progressing, why not?
Not every brownfield site will be suitable for housing.
But surely the sensible order is:
1️⃣ Use existing planning permissions
2️⃣ Maximise realistic brownfield opportunities
3️⃣ Use suitable underused and redevelopment land
4️⃣ Only then consider whether more Green Belt or countryside is necessary
And residents are entitled to ask:
ARE SOME GREENFIELD SITES SIMPLY EASIER OR MORE COMMERCIALLY ATTRACTIVE TO DEVELOP THAN DIFFICULT BROWNFIELD SITES?
The Local Plan should be about what our communities need, not simply which land is easiest to develop.
🌳 WHAT ABOUT THE GREEN BELT?
The current Local Plan already released Green Belt land for housing.
In some locations, replacement Green Belt boundaries were specifically intended to endure in the long term.
We're now preparing another Local Plan.
So if we're considering crossing those boundaries again:
WHAT HAS MATERIALLY CHANGED?
Before more Green Belt is permanently lost, Cheshire East should demonstrate:
• what realistic brownfield alternatives exist;
• how many existing permissions remain unbuilt;
• why existing sites aren't delivering quickly enough;
• whether infrastructure has capacity; and
• why further Green Belt release is genuinely necessary.
We're not saying never build on Green Belt.
We're saying:
BROWNFIELD FIRST — AND PROVE THE NEED BEFORE LOSING MORE GREEN BELT.
🏗️ CHESHIRE EAST HAS ONLY A 3.3-YEAR HOUSING SUPPLY — BUT WHAT DOES THAT ACTUALLY MEAN?
Cheshire East's latest published assessment identifies:
8,780 deliverable homes
against a five-year requirement of:
13,162 homes
That produces a calculated five-year shortfall of:
4,382 HOMES
and a housing land supply of approximately:
3.3 YEARS
That is important.
But a 3.3-year housing land supply does NOT mean Cheshire East has only 3.3 years' worth of land with planning permission.
The calculation is about how many homes CEC considers deliverable within the five-year period.
There are also homes with planning permission which aren't expected to be completed within that five-year window.
And that creates a very important distinction between:
LAND WITH PLANNING PERMISSION
and
HOUSES ACTUALLY BEING DELIVERED QUICKLY ENOUGH
So perhaps the most important question is:
DO WE HAVE A LAND SHORTAGE — OR A DELIVERY PROBLEM?
Before releasing more Green Belt or greenfield land, Cheshire East should put three simple figures side-by-side:
🏠 How many homes already have planning permission?
🏗️ How many of those are expected to be completed within five years?
⏳ How many permitted homes will take longer — and why?
If thousands of homes already have permission but aren't expected to be built quickly enough to count towards the five-year supply, simply allocating more land doesn't necessarily solve the underlying problem.
🏠 AND WHAT ABOUT THE GOVERNMENT'S 1.5 MILLION HOMES?
You've probably heard about the Government's ambition to deliver 1.5 million homes during this Parliament.
Here's something important:
THAT ISN'T 1.5 MILLION EXTRA HOMES ON TOP OF EVERYTHING THAT ALREADY HAS PLANNING PERMISSION.
Homes which already have planning permission can contribute towards that national total when they are actually completed during this Parliament.
So again, the question shouldn't simply be:
“HOW MUCH MORE LAND CAN WE ALLOCATE?”
It should also be:
“WHY AREN'T WE BUILDING THE HOMES THAT ALREADY HAVE PERMISSION?”
The Competition and Markets Authority has also examined housebuilders' build-out rates and the importance of local “absorption rates” — broadly, how quickly new homes can be sold into a local market without reducing prevailing prices.
Allocating more land therefore doesn't automatically mean houses will be built more quickly.
Before permanently releasing more countryside, residents deserve to understand whether we're principally dealing with:
a shortage of suitable land,
a shortage of permissions,
slow build-out,
infrastructure constraints,
market conditions,
or a combination of them.
📈 WERE THE LAST LOCAL PLAN'S GROWTH ASSUMPTIONS RIGHT?
The current Local Plan deliberately pursued an ambitious growth strategy.
There were people at the time who questioned whether some of those growth expectations were realistic.
We don't need to rerun that argument.
We now have something far more useful:
ACTUAL RESULTS.
Before another set of forecasts determines how many homes and how much land Cheshire East needs for decades to come, CEC should publish a simple scorecard:
WHAT WAS FORECAST — AND WHAT ACTUALLY HAPPENED?
Population growth.
Employment growth.
Jobs.
Housing completions.
Affordable housing.
Infrastructure.
If the previous forecasts proved accurate, show us.
If actual growth was materially different, explain why — and explain how that experience has influenced the assumptions being used this time.
Because getting a forecast wrong doesn't merely produce an inaccurate spreadsheet.
IT CAN AFFECT HOW MUCH LAND IS IDENTIFIED FOR DEVELOPMENT.
🚧 WHAT HAPPENED TO THE INFRASTRUCTURE?
Thousands of homes have been built under the current Local Plan.
But has everything else kept pace?
Schools?
Doctors and healthcare?
Roads?
Public transport?
Drainage?
Sewage capacity?
Don't assume another huge housing development automatically means a new school, GP surgery or major road improvement will appear alongside it.
Developers can apply to vary or remove planning conditions, and planning obligations can sometimes be renegotiated.
So Cheshire East should publish:
HOW MANY INFRASTRUCTURE REQUIREMENTS DURING THE CURRENT LOCAL PLAN PERIOD WERE LATER REMOVED, REDUCED, DEFERRED OR ALTERED?
How many involved highways?
Education?
Affordable housing?
Open space?
Community facilities?
How many were changed following viability arguments?
And what was the value of the infrastructure originally expected compared with what was ultimately delivered?
Because there's an enormous difference between saying:
“THIS DEVELOPMENT WILL COME WITH INFRASTRUCTURE”
and being able to say years later:
“THIS IS WHAT WAS ACTUALLY DELIVERED.”
🏫 SCHOOLS — CHESHIRE EAST ALREADY KNEW THERE WAS A RISK
Education provides a particularly useful example.
When the current Local Plan was being prepared, Cheshire East's own infrastructure evidence estimated that approved developments and Local Plan sites in Macclesfield could generate demand for approximately:
679 ADDITIONAL PRIMARY PLACES
and
536 ADDITIONAL SECONDARY PLACES
The Council described the situation as presenting a:
“HIGH RISK FOR THE LOCAL AUTHORITY.”
So this issue was known before the houses were built.
🏫 RESIDENTS WERE RAISING THIS IN 2018
In 2018 Henbury Parish Council challenged the cumulative education impact of three major developments around Chelford Road and Whirley Road.
CEC confirmed that education contributions being sought from those developments collectively amounted to:
£802,625 — Primary education
£947,875 — Secondary education
£227,500 — SEN education
TOTAL: £1,978,000
CEC said it was working with schools to determine where additional capacity should be created.
So the important question now isn't:
“WERE CONTRIBUTIONS REQUESTED?”
It's:
“WHAT WAS ACTUALLY DELIVERED, WHERE AND WHEN?”
🚌 WHERE DID THE CHILDREN GO?
Tytherington High School was subsequently expanded.
CEC's later information records 150 additional places through six additional classrooms, completed in September 2022.
That came more than four years after residents were asking where the additional children generated by these developments would actually go.
And look at the September 2026 admissions figures:
FALLIBROOME
240 places — 240 allocated
TYTHERINGTON
240 places — 240 allocated
MACCLESFIELD ACADEMY
120 places — 98 allocated
That illustrates why saying:
“There are some spare school places somewhere in Macclesfield”
isn't necessarily the same as:
“There are school places close to where the new families actually live.”
We should know:
Which schools do children from the new developments actually attend?
How far are they travelling?
Were additional places available when the houses were occupied?
Has home-to-school transport had to be provided because appropriate local places weren't available?
And, if so:
What has that cost?
🚦 WEAVER GREEN & BROKEN CROSS — SHOW US THE PAPERWORK
The Weaver Green planning permission contained a condition requiring the Broken Cross highway improvements to be completed to the:
“FULL WRITTEN SATISFACTION OF THE LOCAL PLANNING AUTHORITY”
BEFORE THE FIRST DWELLING WAS OCCUPIED.
Bellway subsequently applied to remove that condition.
That application was later withdrawn.
Residents were raising concerns in 2023 about homes apparently being occupied while issues at Broken Cross were still being raised.
Rather than make allegations without the paperwork, there's a very simple question:
SHOW US THE DOCUMENT AND THE DATE.
When did Cheshire East give its written satisfaction that the Broken Cross works required by Condition 6 were complete?
And:
WAS THAT BEFORE THE FIRST WEAVER GREEN RESIDENT MOVED IN?
If everything happened exactly as the planning permission required, that should be straightforward to answer.
Planning conditions exist for a reason.
If infrastructure is important enough to require it before occupation, residents should be able to expect that condition to mean something.
📋 AND THEN THERE'S SECTION 106
Cheshire East's own Internal Audit examined its arrangements for managing and monitoring Section 106 developer agreements and contributions.
Its overall assurance opinion was:
“NO ASSURANCE”
The Council subsequently began work to improve those arrangements.
But before another wave of major development, residents deserve to know:
WHAT WAS PROMISED?
WHAT WAS SECURED?
WHAT WAS LATER CHANGED?
WHAT WAS ACTUALLY DELIVERED?
AND WHEN DID IT ARRIVE RELATIVE TO THE HOUSES?
Developer contributions on a spreadsheet are not infrastructure.
A school place is infrastructure.
A completed road improvement is infrastructure.
A functioning drainage and sewage system is infrastructure.
Healthcare capacity is infrastructure.
❓ SO BEFORE WE RELEASE ANOTHER GENERATION OF LAND...
Let's properly examine what happened last time.
Did population and employment growth match the forecasts?
How many existing permissions remain unbuilt?
Why aren't all permitted sites delivering at the expected rate?
How much realistic brownfield capacity remains?
How much Green Belt was released?
How many genuinely lower-cost homes were actually produced?
How much developer infrastructure was originally promised?
How much was subsequently changed?
How much was actually delivered?
Were school places available when families moved in?
Did road improvements arrive when they were supposed to?
Did healthcare, drainage and sewage capacity keep pace?
These aren't anti-development questions.
Sent from Ru x
Comment
Local plan scoping consultation
Green Belt
Representation ID: 4792
Received: 23/08/2026
Respondent: Ruth Bass
🌳 WHAT ABOUT THE GREEN BELT?
The current Local Plan already released Green Belt land for housing.
In some locations, replacement Green Belt boundaries were specifically intended to endure in the long term.
We're now preparing another Local Plan.
So if we're considering crossing those boundaries again:
WHAT HAS MATERIALLY CHANGED?
Before more Green Belt is permanently lost, Cheshire East should demonstrate:
• what realistic brownfield alternatives exist;
• how many existing permissions remain unbuilt;
• why existing sites aren't delivering quickly enough;
• whether infrastructure has capacity; and
• why further Green Belt release is genuinely necessary.
We're not saying never build on Green Belt.
We're saying:
BROWNFIELD FIRST — AND PROVE THE NEED BEFORE LOSING MORE GREEN BELT.
🏚️ Brownfield first
🌳 Green Belt protected unless further release is genuinely necessary
🏠 Genuinely affordable homes local people can actually buy
📋 Existing planning permissions properly accounted for
🏗️ Answers about why permitted sites aren't being built faster
🚧 Infrastructure before or alongside development
🏫 Enough school places
🩺 Enough healthcare capacity
🚗 Roads that can cope
💧 Drainage and sewage systems that can cope
“I support new housing where it is genuinely needed, but I want Cheshire East to prioritise suitable brownfield land, properly account for existing planning permissions, provide genuinely affordable homes local people can buy, ensure infrastructure is available alongside development and demonstrate why any further Green Belt release is necessary.”
Then add whatever particularly concerns you about your own area.
💷 WHAT DOES “AFFORDABLE HOUSING” ACTUALLY MEAN?
Here's a real Macclesfield comparison.
An older two-bedroom terraced house on Timber Street is currently being marketed on the open market for:
£149,950 — FOR 100% OF THE HOUSE
Now compare that with a new two-bedroom shared-ownership home at Heron View, offered as an affordable route into home ownership.
The headline advertised price is:
£75,625
That sounds dramatically cheaper.
But £75,625 doesn't buy the house.
It buys:
25% OF A PROPERTY VALUED AT £302,500
The buyer then has a mortgage on the 25% they purchase and pays rent on the remaining 75%, together with the applicable charges.
Using the figures advertised for this particular property:
Mortgage illustration: around £416 per month
Rent: £519.92 per month
Service charge: £35.85 per month
Management fee: £10 per month
That's approximately:
£982 PER MONTH
before council tax, gas, electricity, water, insurance and other household costs.
Compare that with the older Timber Street terrace:
TIMBER STREET
🏠 Price: £149,950
🔑 Ownership: 100%
💷 Illustrative mortgage previously shown: around £752 per month
HERON VIEW
🏠 Full property value: £302,500
💷 Initial purchase: £75,625
🔑 Ownership: 25%
💷 Approximate mortgage + rent + listed charges: £982 per month
The mortgage examples aren't directly like-for-like because deposits, mortgage rates and terms can differ.
But the fundamental comparison remains:
£149,950 BUYS AN ENTIRE EXISTING HOUSE.
£75,625 BUYS 25% OF THE NEW ONE.
And there's another important difference.
If the shared owner later moves while still owning 25%, they don't suddenly have the value of the whole property available for their next purchase. Their interest is their share, after taking account of their mortgage and selling costs.
They can potentially buy further shares through “staircasing”, but those additional shares have to be purchased.
Shared ownership can absolutely help some people and we're not knocking people who choose it.
But it isn't the same thing as building a genuinely inexpensive house that a first-time buyer can purchase outright.
🏠 SO WHY AREN'T WE BUILDING REAL FIRST-TIME BUYER HOMES?
If an existing two-bedroom Macclesfield terrace can be marketed on the open market for around £150,000, why shouldn't major new developments include smaller, simpler homes specifically aimed at first-time buyers at around that sort of price?
Not £300,000+ properties where £75,000 buys a quarter.
But:
A HOME COSTING AROUND £150,000 — FOR THE WHOLE HOME.
There is already a Government mechanism demonstrating that discounted outright ownership is possible.
Under First Homes, qualifying first-time buyers can purchase properties at a discount to market value, with the discount remaining attached to the property for future qualifying purchasers.
So why shouldn't Cheshire East investigate through its new Local Plan whether major developments should provide a meaningful proportion of:
GENUINE FIRST-TIME BUYER HOMES
OWNED OUTRIGHT
TARGETED AT AROUND £150,000 OR LESS WHERE LOCAL EVIDENCE SUPPORTS IT
If we're going to allocate land for thousands more houses, surely one of the most important questions is:
HOW MANY OF THOSE HOMES WILL A LOCAL YOUNG PERSON ACTUALLY BE ABLE TO BUY?
That's a much more useful affordability test than simply counting how many properties meet a technical definition of “affordable”.
WHAT DOES THE BUYER ACTUALLY PAY — AND WHAT DO THEY ACTUALLY OWN?
🏚️ BROWNFIELD FIRST
Before more countryside or Green Belt is considered for development, Cheshire East should give residents some straightforward answers.
How much suitable brownfield land is available?
How many homes could realistically be built on it?
How much brownfield land already has planning permission?
How much previously developed or allocated land remains unused?
Where brownfield sites aren't progressing, why not?
Not every brownfield site will be suitable for housing.
But surely the sensible order is:
1️⃣ Use existing planning permissions
2️⃣ Maximise realistic brownfield opportunities
3️⃣ Use suitable underused and redevelopment land
4️⃣ Only then consider whether more Green Belt or countryside is necessary
And residents are entitled to ask:
ARE SOME GREENFIELD SITES SIMPLY EASIER OR MORE COMMERCIALLY ATTRACTIVE TO DEVELOP THAN DIFFICULT BROWNFIELD SITES?
The Local Plan should be about what our communities need, not simply which land is easiest to develop.
🌳 WHAT ABOUT THE GREEN BELT?
The current Local Plan already released Green Belt land for housing.
In some locations, replacement Green Belt boundaries were specifically intended to endure in the long term.
We're now preparing another Local Plan.
So if we're considering crossing those boundaries again:
WHAT HAS MATERIALLY CHANGED?
Before more Green Belt is permanently lost, Cheshire East should demonstrate:
• what realistic brownfield alternatives exist;
• how many existing permissions remain unbuilt;
• why existing sites aren't delivering quickly enough;
• whether infrastructure has capacity; and
• why further Green Belt release is genuinely necessary.
We're not saying never build on Green Belt.
We're saying:
BROWNFIELD FIRST — AND PROVE THE NEED BEFORE LOSING MORE GREEN BELT.
🏗️ CHESHIRE EAST HAS ONLY A 3.3-YEAR HOUSING SUPPLY — BUT WHAT DOES THAT ACTUALLY MEAN?
Cheshire East's latest published assessment identifies:
8,780 deliverable homes
against a five-year requirement of:
13,162 homes
That produces a calculated five-year shortfall of:
4,382 HOMES
and a housing land supply of approximately:
3.3 YEARS
That is important.
But a 3.3-year housing land supply does NOT mean Cheshire East has only 3.3 years' worth of land with planning permission.
The calculation is about how many homes CEC considers deliverable within the five-year period.
There are also homes with planning permission which aren't expected to be completed within that five-year window.
And that creates a very important distinction between:
LAND WITH PLANNING PERMISSION
and
HOUSES ACTUALLY BEING DELIVERED QUICKLY ENOUGH
So perhaps the most important question is:
DO WE HAVE A LAND SHORTAGE — OR A DELIVERY PROBLEM?
Before releasing more Green Belt or greenfield land, Cheshire East should put three simple figures side-by-side:
🏠 How many homes already have planning permission?
🏗️ How many of those are expected to be completed within five years?
⏳ How many permitted homes will take longer — and why?
If thousands of homes already have permission but aren't expected to be built quickly enough to count towards the five-year supply, simply allocating more land doesn't necessarily solve the underlying problem.
🏠 AND WHAT ABOUT THE GOVERNMENT'S 1.5 MILLION HOMES?
You've probably heard about the Government's ambition to deliver 1.5 million homes during this Parliament.
Here's something important:
THAT ISN'T 1.5 MILLION EXTRA HOMES ON TOP OF EVERYTHING THAT ALREADY HAS PLANNING PERMISSION.
Homes which already have planning permission can contribute towards that national total when they are actually completed during this Parliament.
So again, the question shouldn't simply be:
“HOW MUCH MORE LAND CAN WE ALLOCATE?”
It should also be:
“WHY AREN'T WE BUILDING THE HOMES THAT ALREADY HAVE PERMISSION?”
The Competition and Markets Authority has also examined housebuilders' build-out rates and the importance of local “absorption rates” — broadly, how quickly new homes can be sold into a local market without reducing prevailing prices.
Allocating more land therefore doesn't automatically mean houses will be built more quickly.
Before permanently releasing more countryside, residents deserve to understand whether we're principally dealing with:
a shortage of suitable land,
a shortage of permissions,
slow build-out,
infrastructure constraints,
market conditions,
or a combination of them.
📈 WERE THE LAST LOCAL PLAN'S GROWTH ASSUMPTIONS RIGHT?
The current Local Plan deliberately pursued an ambitious growth strategy.
There were people at the time who questioned whether some of those growth expectations were realistic.
We don't need to rerun that argument.
We now have something far more useful:
ACTUAL RESULTS.
Before another set of forecasts determines how many homes and how much land Cheshire East needs for decades to come, CEC should publish a simple scorecard:
WHAT WAS FORECAST — AND WHAT ACTUALLY HAPPENED?
Population growth.
Employment growth.
Jobs.
Housing completions.
Affordable housing.
Infrastructure.
If the previous forecasts proved accurate, show us.
If actual growth was materially different, explain why — and explain how that experience has influenced the assumptions being used this time.
Because getting a forecast wrong doesn't merely produce an inaccurate spreadsheet.
IT CAN AFFECT HOW MUCH LAND IS IDENTIFIED FOR DEVELOPMENT.
🚧 WHAT HAPPENED TO THE INFRASTRUCTURE?
Thousands of homes have been built under the current Local Plan.
But has everything else kept pace?
Schools?
Doctors and healthcare?
Roads?
Public transport?
Drainage?
Sewage capacity?
Don't assume another huge housing development automatically means a new school, GP surgery or major road improvement will appear alongside it.
Developers can apply to vary or remove planning conditions, and planning obligations can sometimes be renegotiated.
So Cheshire East should publish:
HOW MANY INFRASTRUCTURE REQUIREMENTS DURING THE CURRENT LOCAL PLAN PERIOD WERE LATER REMOVED, REDUCED, DEFERRED OR ALTERED?
How many involved highways?
Education?
Affordable housing?
Open space?
Community facilities?
How many were changed following viability arguments?
And what was the value of the infrastructure originally expected compared with what was ultimately delivered?
Because there's an enormous difference between saying:
“THIS DEVELOPMENT WILL COME WITH INFRASTRUCTURE”
and being able to say years later:
“THIS IS WHAT WAS ACTUALLY DELIVERED.”
🏫 SCHOOLS — CHESHIRE EAST ALREADY KNEW THERE WAS A RISK
Education provides a particularly useful example.
When the current Local Plan was being prepared, Cheshire East's own infrastructure evidence estimated that approved developments and Local Plan sites in Macclesfield could generate demand for approximately:
679 ADDITIONAL PRIMARY PLACES
and
536 ADDITIONAL SECONDARY PLACES
The Council described the situation as presenting a:
“HIGH RISK FOR THE LOCAL AUTHORITY.”
So this issue was known before the houses were built.
🏫 RESIDENTS WERE RAISING THIS IN 2018
In 2018 Henbury Parish Council challenged the cumulative education impact of three major developments around Chelford Road and Whirley Road.
CEC confirmed that education contributions being sought from those developments collectively amounted to:
£802,625 — Primary education
£947,875 — Secondary education
£227,500 — SEN education
TOTAL: £1,978,000
CEC said it was working with schools to determine where additional capacity should be created.
So the important question now isn't:
“WERE CONTRIBUTIONS REQUESTED?”
It's:
“WHAT WAS ACTUALLY DELIVERED, WHERE AND WHEN?”
🚌 WHERE DID THE CHILDREN GO?
Tytherington High School was subsequently expanded.
CEC's later information records 150 additional places through six additional classrooms, completed in September 2022.
That came more than four years after residents were asking where the additional children generated by these developments would actually go.
And look at the September 2026 admissions figures:
FALLIBROOME
240 places — 240 allocated
TYTHERINGTON
240 places — 240 allocated
MACCLESFIELD ACADEMY
120 places — 98 allocated
That illustrates why saying:
“There are some spare school places somewhere in Macclesfield”
isn't necessarily the same as:
“There are school places close to where the new families actually live.”
We should know:
Which schools do children from the new developments actually attend?
How far are they travelling?
Were additional places available when the houses were occupied?
Has home-to-school transport had to be provided because appropriate local places weren't available?
And, if so:
What has that cost?
🚦 WEAVER GREEN & BROKEN CROSS — SHOW US THE PAPERWORK
The Weaver Green planning permission contained a condition requiring the Broken Cross highway improvements to be completed to the:
“FULL WRITTEN SATISFACTION OF THE LOCAL PLANNING AUTHORITY”
BEFORE THE FIRST DWELLING WAS OCCUPIED.
Bellway subsequently applied to remove that condition.
That application was later withdrawn.
Residents were raising concerns in 2023 about homes apparently being occupied while issues at Broken Cross were still being raised.
Rather than make allegations without the paperwork, there's a very simple question:
SHOW US THE DOCUMENT AND THE DATE.
When did Cheshire East give its written satisfaction that the Broken Cross works required by Condition 6 were complete?
And:
WAS THAT BEFORE THE FIRST WEAVER GREEN RESIDENT MOVED IN?
If everything happened exactly as the planning permission required, that should be straightforward to answer.
Planning conditions exist for a reason.
If infrastructure is important enough to require it before occupation, residents should be able to expect that condition to mean something.
📋 AND THEN THERE'S SECTION 106
Cheshire East's own Internal Audit examined its arrangements for managing and monitoring Section 106 developer agreements and contributions.
Its overall assurance opinion was:
“NO ASSURANCE”
The Council subsequently began work to improve those arrangements.
But before another wave of major development, residents deserve to know:
WHAT WAS PROMISED?
WHAT WAS SECURED?
WHAT WAS LATER CHANGED?
WHAT WAS ACTUALLY DELIVERED?
AND WHEN DID IT ARRIVE RELATIVE TO THE HOUSES?
Developer contributions on a spreadsheet are not infrastructure.
A school place is infrastructure.
A completed road improvement is infrastructure.
A functioning drainage and sewage system is infrastructure.
Healthcare capacity is infrastructure.
❓ SO BEFORE WE RELEASE ANOTHER GENERATION OF LAND...
Let's properly examine what happened last time.
Did population and employment growth match the forecasts?
How many existing permissions remain unbuilt?
Why aren't all permitted sites delivering at the expected rate?
How much realistic brownfield capacity remains?
How much Green Belt was released?
How many genuinely lower-cost homes were actually produced?
How much developer infrastructure was originally promised?
How much was subsequently changed?
How much was actually delivered?
Were school places available when families moved in?
Did road improvements arrive when they were supposed to?
Did healthcare, drainage and sewage capacity keep pace?
These aren't anti-development questions.
Sent from Ru x
Comment
Local plan scoping consultation
Increase in housing requirements
Representation ID: 4793
Received: 23/08/2026
Respondent: Ruth Bass
This commentary highlights that Cheshire East’s reported 3.3-year housing land supply reflects a shortfall in homes expected to be delivered within five years, not necessarily a lack of land with planning permission. It argues that the key issue may be housing delivery rather than land availability, and calls for greater transparency on how many permitted homes are being built and why others are delayed. It also notes that existing permissions can contribute to the Government’s 1.5 million homes target when completed, and suggests the Council should examine build-out rates, infrastructure constraints and market factors before allocating additional Green Belt or greenfield land.
🏚️ Brownfield first
🌳 Green Belt protected unless further release is genuinely necessary
🏠 Genuinely affordable homes local people can actually buy
📋 Existing planning permissions properly accounted for
🏗️ Answers about why permitted sites aren't being built faster
🚧 Infrastructure before or alongside development
🏫 Enough school places
🩺 Enough healthcare capacity
🚗 Roads that can cope
💧 Drainage and sewage systems that can cope
“I support new housing where it is genuinely needed, but I want Cheshire East to prioritise suitable brownfield land, properly account for existing planning permissions, provide genuinely affordable homes local people can buy, ensure infrastructure is available alongside development and demonstrate why any further Green Belt release is necessary.”
Then add whatever particularly concerns you about your own area.
💷 WHAT DOES “AFFORDABLE HOUSING” ACTUALLY MEAN?
Here's a real Macclesfield comparison.
An older two-bedroom terraced house on Timber Street is currently being marketed on the open market for:
£149,950 — FOR 100% OF THE HOUSE
Now compare that with a new two-bedroom shared-ownership home at Heron View, offered as an affordable route into home ownership.
The headline advertised price is:
£75,625
That sounds dramatically cheaper.
But £75,625 doesn't buy the house.
It buys:
25% OF A PROPERTY VALUED AT £302,500
The buyer then has a mortgage on the 25% they purchase and pays rent on the remaining 75%, together with the applicable charges.
Using the figures advertised for this particular property:
Mortgage illustration: around £416 per month
Rent: £519.92 per month
Service charge: £35.85 per month
Management fee: £10 per month
That's approximately:
£982 PER MONTH
before council tax, gas, electricity, water, insurance and other household costs.
Compare that with the older Timber Street terrace:
TIMBER STREET
🏠 Price: £149,950
🔑 Ownership: 100%
💷 Illustrative mortgage previously shown: around £752 per month
HERON VIEW
🏠 Full property value: £302,500
💷 Initial purchase: £75,625
🔑 Ownership: 25%
💷 Approximate mortgage + rent + listed charges: £982 per month
The mortgage examples aren't directly like-for-like because deposits, mortgage rates and terms can differ.
But the fundamental comparison remains:
£149,950 BUYS AN ENTIRE EXISTING HOUSE.
£75,625 BUYS 25% OF THE NEW ONE.
And there's another important difference.
If the shared owner later moves while still owning 25%, they don't suddenly have the value of the whole property available for their next purchase. Their interest is their share, after taking account of their mortgage and selling costs.
They can potentially buy further shares through “staircasing”, but those additional shares have to be purchased.
Shared ownership can absolutely help some people and we're not knocking people who choose it.
But it isn't the same thing as building a genuinely inexpensive house that a first-time buyer can purchase outright.
🏠 SO WHY AREN'T WE BUILDING REAL FIRST-TIME BUYER HOMES?
If an existing two-bedroom Macclesfield terrace can be marketed on the open market for around £150,000, why shouldn't major new developments include smaller, simpler homes specifically aimed at first-time buyers at around that sort of price?
Not £300,000+ properties where £75,000 buys a quarter.
But:
A HOME COSTING AROUND £150,000 — FOR THE WHOLE HOME.
There is already a Government mechanism demonstrating that discounted outright ownership is possible.
Under First Homes, qualifying first-time buyers can purchase properties at a discount to market value, with the discount remaining attached to the property for future qualifying purchasers.
So why shouldn't Cheshire East investigate through its new Local Plan whether major developments should provide a meaningful proportion of:
GENUINE FIRST-TIME BUYER HOMES
OWNED OUTRIGHT
TARGETED AT AROUND £150,000 OR LESS WHERE LOCAL EVIDENCE SUPPORTS IT
If we're going to allocate land for thousands more houses, surely one of the most important questions is:
HOW MANY OF THOSE HOMES WILL A LOCAL YOUNG PERSON ACTUALLY BE ABLE TO BUY?
That's a much more useful affordability test than simply counting how many properties meet a technical definition of “affordable”.
WHAT DOES THE BUYER ACTUALLY PAY — AND WHAT DO THEY ACTUALLY OWN?
🏚️ BROWNFIELD FIRST
Before more countryside or Green Belt is considered for development, Cheshire East should give residents some straightforward answers.
How much suitable brownfield land is available?
How many homes could realistically be built on it?
How much brownfield land already has planning permission?
How much previously developed or allocated land remains unused?
Where brownfield sites aren't progressing, why not?
Not every brownfield site will be suitable for housing.
But surely the sensible order is:
1️⃣ Use existing planning permissions
2️⃣ Maximise realistic brownfield opportunities
3️⃣ Use suitable underused and redevelopment land
4️⃣ Only then consider whether more Green Belt or countryside is necessary
And residents are entitled to ask:
ARE SOME GREENFIELD SITES SIMPLY EASIER OR MORE COMMERCIALLY ATTRACTIVE TO DEVELOP THAN DIFFICULT BROWNFIELD SITES?
The Local Plan should be about what our communities need, not simply which land is easiest to develop.
🌳 WHAT ABOUT THE GREEN BELT?
The current Local Plan already released Green Belt land for housing.
In some locations, replacement Green Belt boundaries were specifically intended to endure in the long term.
We're now preparing another Local Plan.
So if we're considering crossing those boundaries again:
WHAT HAS MATERIALLY CHANGED?
Before more Green Belt is permanently lost, Cheshire East should demonstrate:
• what realistic brownfield alternatives exist;
• how many existing permissions remain unbuilt;
• why existing sites aren't delivering quickly enough;
• whether infrastructure has capacity; and
• why further Green Belt release is genuinely necessary.
We're not saying never build on Green Belt.
We're saying:
BROWNFIELD FIRST — AND PROVE THE NEED BEFORE LOSING MORE GREEN BELT.
🏗️ CHESHIRE EAST HAS ONLY A 3.3-YEAR HOUSING SUPPLY — BUT WHAT DOES THAT ACTUALLY MEAN?
Cheshire East's latest published assessment identifies:
8,780 deliverable homes
against a five-year requirement of:
13,162 homes
That produces a calculated five-year shortfall of:
4,382 HOMES
and a housing land supply of approximately:
3.3 YEARS
That is important.
But a 3.3-year housing land supply does NOT mean Cheshire East has only 3.3 years' worth of land with planning permission.
The calculation is about how many homes CEC considers deliverable within the five-year period.
There are also homes with planning permission which aren't expected to be completed within that five-year window.
And that creates a very important distinction between:
LAND WITH PLANNING PERMISSION
and
HOUSES ACTUALLY BEING DELIVERED QUICKLY ENOUGH
So perhaps the most important question is:
DO WE HAVE A LAND SHORTAGE — OR A DELIVERY PROBLEM?
Before releasing more Green Belt or greenfield land, Cheshire East should put three simple figures side-by-side:
🏠 How many homes already have planning permission?
🏗️ How many of those are expected to be completed within five years?
⏳ How many permitted homes will take longer — and why?
If thousands of homes already have permission but aren't expected to be built quickly enough to count towards the five-year supply, simply allocating more land doesn't necessarily solve the underlying problem.
🏠 AND WHAT ABOUT THE GOVERNMENT'S 1.5 MILLION HOMES?
You've probably heard about the Government's ambition to deliver 1.5 million homes during this Parliament.
Here's something important:
THAT ISN'T 1.5 MILLION EXTRA HOMES ON TOP OF EVERYTHING THAT ALREADY HAS PLANNING PERMISSION.
Homes which already have planning permission can contribute towards that national total when they are actually completed during this Parliament.
So again, the question shouldn't simply be:
“HOW MUCH MORE LAND CAN WE ALLOCATE?”
It should also be:
“WHY AREN'T WE BUILDING THE HOMES THAT ALREADY HAVE PERMISSION?”
The Competition and Markets Authority has also examined housebuilders' build-out rates and the importance of local “absorption rates” — broadly, how quickly new homes can be sold into a local market without reducing prevailing prices.
Allocating more land therefore doesn't automatically mean houses will be built more quickly.
Before permanently releasing more countryside, residents deserve to understand whether we're principally dealing with:
a shortage of suitable land,
a shortage of permissions,
slow build-out,
infrastructure constraints,
market conditions,
or a combination of them.
📈 WERE THE LAST LOCAL PLAN'S GROWTH ASSUMPTIONS RIGHT?
The current Local Plan deliberately pursued an ambitious growth strategy.
There were people at the time who questioned whether some of those growth expectations were realistic.
We don't need to rerun that argument.
We now have something far more useful:
ACTUAL RESULTS.
Before another set of forecasts determines how many homes and how much land Cheshire East needs for decades to come, CEC should publish a simple scorecard:
WHAT WAS FORECAST — AND WHAT ACTUALLY HAPPENED?
Population growth.
Employment growth.
Jobs.
Housing completions.
Affordable housing.
Infrastructure.
If the previous forecasts proved accurate, show us.
If actual growth was materially different, explain why — and explain how that experience has influenced the assumptions being used this time.
Because getting a forecast wrong doesn't merely produce an inaccurate spreadsheet.
IT CAN AFFECT HOW MUCH LAND IS IDENTIFIED FOR DEVELOPMENT.
🚧 WHAT HAPPENED TO THE INFRASTRUCTURE?
Thousands of homes have been built under the current Local Plan.
But has everything else kept pace?
Schools?
Doctors and healthcare?
Roads?
Public transport?
Drainage?
Sewage capacity?
Don't assume another huge housing development automatically means a new school, GP surgery or major road improvement will appear alongside it.
Developers can apply to vary or remove planning conditions, and planning obligations can sometimes be renegotiated.
So Cheshire East should publish:
HOW MANY INFRASTRUCTURE REQUIREMENTS DURING THE CURRENT LOCAL PLAN PERIOD WERE LATER REMOVED, REDUCED, DEFERRED OR ALTERED?
How many involved highways?
Education?
Affordable housing?
Open space?
Community facilities?
How many were changed following viability arguments?
And what was the value of the infrastructure originally expected compared with what was ultimately delivered?
Because there's an enormous difference between saying:
“THIS DEVELOPMENT WILL COME WITH INFRASTRUCTURE”
and being able to say years later:
“THIS IS WHAT WAS ACTUALLY DELIVERED.”
🏫 SCHOOLS — CHESHIRE EAST ALREADY KNEW THERE WAS A RISK
Education provides a particularly useful example.
When the current Local Plan was being prepared, Cheshire East's own infrastructure evidence estimated that approved developments and Local Plan sites in Macclesfield could generate demand for approximately:
679 ADDITIONAL PRIMARY PLACES
and
536 ADDITIONAL SECONDARY PLACES
The Council described the situation as presenting a:
“HIGH RISK FOR THE LOCAL AUTHORITY.”
So this issue was known before the houses were built.
🏫 RESIDENTS WERE RAISING THIS IN 2018
In 2018 Henbury Parish Council challenged the cumulative education impact of three major developments around Chelford Road and Whirley Road.
CEC confirmed that education contributions being sought from those developments collectively amounted to:
£802,625 — Primary education
£947,875 — Secondary education
£227,500 — SEN education
TOTAL: £1,978,000
CEC said it was working with schools to determine where additional capacity should be created.
So the important question now isn't:
“WERE CONTRIBUTIONS REQUESTED?”
It's:
“WHAT WAS ACTUALLY DELIVERED, WHERE AND WHEN?”
🚌 WHERE DID THE CHILDREN GO?
Tytherington High School was subsequently expanded.
CEC's later information records 150 additional places through six additional classrooms, completed in September 2022.
That came more than four years after residents were asking where the additional children generated by these developments would actually go.
And look at the September 2026 admissions figures:
FALLIBROOME
240 places — 240 allocated
TYTHERINGTON
240 places — 240 allocated
MACCLESFIELD ACADEMY
120 places — 98 allocated
That illustrates why saying:
“There are some spare school places somewhere in Macclesfield”
isn't necessarily the same as:
“There are school places close to where the new families actually live.”
We should know:
Which schools do children from the new developments actually attend?
How far are they travelling?
Were additional places available when the houses were occupied?
Has home-to-school transport had to be provided because appropriate local places weren't available?
And, if so:
What has that cost?
🚦 WEAVER GREEN & BROKEN CROSS — SHOW US THE PAPERWORK
The Weaver Green planning permission contained a condition requiring the Broken Cross highway improvements to be completed to the:
“FULL WRITTEN SATISFACTION OF THE LOCAL PLANNING AUTHORITY”
BEFORE THE FIRST DWELLING WAS OCCUPIED.
Bellway subsequently applied to remove that condition.
That application was later withdrawn.
Residents were raising concerns in 2023 about homes apparently being occupied while issues at Broken Cross were still being raised.
Rather than make allegations without the paperwork, there's a very simple question:
SHOW US THE DOCUMENT AND THE DATE.
When did Cheshire East give its written satisfaction that the Broken Cross works required by Condition 6 were complete?
And:
WAS THAT BEFORE THE FIRST WEAVER GREEN RESIDENT MOVED IN?
If everything happened exactly as the planning permission required, that should be straightforward to answer.
Planning conditions exist for a reason.
If infrastructure is important enough to require it before occupation, residents should be able to expect that condition to mean something.
📋 AND THEN THERE'S SECTION 106
Cheshire East's own Internal Audit examined its arrangements for managing and monitoring Section 106 developer agreements and contributions.
Its overall assurance opinion was:
“NO ASSURANCE”
The Council subsequently began work to improve those arrangements.
But before another wave of major development, residents deserve to know:
WHAT WAS PROMISED?
WHAT WAS SECURED?
WHAT WAS LATER CHANGED?
WHAT WAS ACTUALLY DELIVERED?
AND WHEN DID IT ARRIVE RELATIVE TO THE HOUSES?
Developer contributions on a spreadsheet are not infrastructure.
A school place is infrastructure.
A completed road improvement is infrastructure.
A functioning drainage and sewage system is infrastructure.
Healthcare capacity is infrastructure.
❓ SO BEFORE WE RELEASE ANOTHER GENERATION OF LAND...
Let's properly examine what happened last time.
Did population and employment growth match the forecasts?
How many existing permissions remain unbuilt?
Why aren't all permitted sites delivering at the expected rate?
How much realistic brownfield capacity remains?
How much Green Belt was released?
How many genuinely lower-cost homes were actually produced?
How much developer infrastructure was originally promised?
How much was subsequently changed?
How much was actually delivered?
Were school places available when families moved in?
Did road improvements arrive when they were supposed to?
Did healthcare, drainage and sewage capacity keep pace?
These aren't anti-development questions.
Sent from Ru x
Comment
Local plan scoping consultation
Planning for growth
Representation ID: 4794
Received: 23/08/2026
Respondent: Ruth Bass
📈 WERE THE LAST LOCAL PLAN'S GROWTH ASSUMPTIONS RIGHT?
The current Local Plan deliberately pursued an ambitious growth strategy.
There were people at the time who questioned whether some of those growth expectations were realistic.
We don't need to rerun that argument.
We now have something far more useful:
ACTUAL RESULTS.
Before another set of forecasts determines how many homes and how much land Cheshire East needs for decades to come, CEC should publish a simple scorecard:
WHAT WAS FORECAST — AND WHAT ACTUALLY HAPPENED?
Population growth.
Employment growth.
Jobs.
Housing completions.
Affordable housing.
Infrastructure.
If the previous forecasts proved accurate, show us.
If actual growth was materially different, explain why — and explain how that experience has influenced the assumptions being used this time.
Because getting a forecast wrong doesn't merely produce an inaccurate spreadsheet.
IT CAN AFFECT HOW MUCH LAND IS IDENTIFIED FOR DEVELOPMENT.
🏚️ Brownfield first
🌳 Green Belt protected unless further release is genuinely necessary
🏠 Genuinely affordable homes local people can actually buy
📋 Existing planning permissions properly accounted for
🏗️ Answers about why permitted sites aren't being built faster
🚧 Infrastructure before or alongside development
🏫 Enough school places
🩺 Enough healthcare capacity
🚗 Roads that can cope
💧 Drainage and sewage systems that can cope
“I support new housing where it is genuinely needed, but I want Cheshire East to prioritise suitable brownfield land, properly account for existing planning permissions, provide genuinely affordable homes local people can buy, ensure infrastructure is available alongside development and demonstrate why any further Green Belt release is necessary.”
Then add whatever particularly concerns you about your own area.
💷 WHAT DOES “AFFORDABLE HOUSING” ACTUALLY MEAN?
Here's a real Macclesfield comparison.
An older two-bedroom terraced house on Timber Street is currently being marketed on the open market for:
£149,950 — FOR 100% OF THE HOUSE
Now compare that with a new two-bedroom shared-ownership home at Heron View, offered as an affordable route into home ownership.
The headline advertised price is:
£75,625
That sounds dramatically cheaper.
But £75,625 doesn't buy the house.
It buys:
25% OF A PROPERTY VALUED AT £302,500
The buyer then has a mortgage on the 25% they purchase and pays rent on the remaining 75%, together with the applicable charges.
Using the figures advertised for this particular property:
Mortgage illustration: around £416 per month
Rent: £519.92 per month
Service charge: £35.85 per month
Management fee: £10 per month
That's approximately:
£982 PER MONTH
before council tax, gas, electricity, water, insurance and other household costs.
Compare that with the older Timber Street terrace:
TIMBER STREET
🏠 Price: £149,950
🔑 Ownership: 100%
💷 Illustrative mortgage previously shown: around £752 per month
HERON VIEW
🏠 Full property value: £302,500
💷 Initial purchase: £75,625
🔑 Ownership: 25%
💷 Approximate mortgage + rent + listed charges: £982 per month
The mortgage examples aren't directly like-for-like because deposits, mortgage rates and terms can differ.
But the fundamental comparison remains:
£149,950 BUYS AN ENTIRE EXISTING HOUSE.
£75,625 BUYS 25% OF THE NEW ONE.
And there's another important difference.
If the shared owner later moves while still owning 25%, they don't suddenly have the value of the whole property available for their next purchase. Their interest is their share, after taking account of their mortgage and selling costs.
They can potentially buy further shares through “staircasing”, but those additional shares have to be purchased.
Shared ownership can absolutely help some people and we're not knocking people who choose it.
But it isn't the same thing as building a genuinely inexpensive house that a first-time buyer can purchase outright.
🏠 SO WHY AREN'T WE BUILDING REAL FIRST-TIME BUYER HOMES?
If an existing two-bedroom Macclesfield terrace can be marketed on the open market for around £150,000, why shouldn't major new developments include smaller, simpler homes specifically aimed at first-time buyers at around that sort of price?
Not £300,000+ properties where £75,000 buys a quarter.
But:
A HOME COSTING AROUND £150,000 — FOR THE WHOLE HOME.
There is already a Government mechanism demonstrating that discounted outright ownership is possible.
Under First Homes, qualifying first-time buyers can purchase properties at a discount to market value, with the discount remaining attached to the property for future qualifying purchasers.
So why shouldn't Cheshire East investigate through its new Local Plan whether major developments should provide a meaningful proportion of:
GENUINE FIRST-TIME BUYER HOMES
OWNED OUTRIGHT
TARGETED AT AROUND £150,000 OR LESS WHERE LOCAL EVIDENCE SUPPORTS IT
If we're going to allocate land for thousands more houses, surely one of the most important questions is:
HOW MANY OF THOSE HOMES WILL A LOCAL YOUNG PERSON ACTUALLY BE ABLE TO BUY?
That's a much more useful affordability test than simply counting how many properties meet a technical definition of “affordable”.
WHAT DOES THE BUYER ACTUALLY PAY — AND WHAT DO THEY ACTUALLY OWN?
🏚️ BROWNFIELD FIRST
Before more countryside or Green Belt is considered for development, Cheshire East should give residents some straightforward answers.
How much suitable brownfield land is available?
How many homes could realistically be built on it?
How much brownfield land already has planning permission?
How much previously developed or allocated land remains unused?
Where brownfield sites aren't progressing, why not?
Not every brownfield site will be suitable for housing.
But surely the sensible order is:
1️⃣ Use existing planning permissions
2️⃣ Maximise realistic brownfield opportunities
3️⃣ Use suitable underused and redevelopment land
4️⃣ Only then consider whether more Green Belt or countryside is necessary
And residents are entitled to ask:
ARE SOME GREENFIELD SITES SIMPLY EASIER OR MORE COMMERCIALLY ATTRACTIVE TO DEVELOP THAN DIFFICULT BROWNFIELD SITES?
The Local Plan should be about what our communities need, not simply which land is easiest to develop.
🌳 WHAT ABOUT THE GREEN BELT?
The current Local Plan already released Green Belt land for housing.
In some locations, replacement Green Belt boundaries were specifically intended to endure in the long term.
We're now preparing another Local Plan.
So if we're considering crossing those boundaries again:
WHAT HAS MATERIALLY CHANGED?
Before more Green Belt is permanently lost, Cheshire East should demonstrate:
• what realistic brownfield alternatives exist;
• how many existing permissions remain unbuilt;
• why existing sites aren't delivering quickly enough;
• whether infrastructure has capacity; and
• why further Green Belt release is genuinely necessary.
We're not saying never build on Green Belt.
We're saying:
BROWNFIELD FIRST — AND PROVE THE NEED BEFORE LOSING MORE GREEN BELT.
🏗️ CHESHIRE EAST HAS ONLY A 3.3-YEAR HOUSING SUPPLY — BUT WHAT DOES THAT ACTUALLY MEAN?
Cheshire East's latest published assessment identifies:
8,780 deliverable homes
against a five-year requirement of:
13,162 homes
That produces a calculated five-year shortfall of:
4,382 HOMES
and a housing land supply of approximately:
3.3 YEARS
That is important.
But a 3.3-year housing land supply does NOT mean Cheshire East has only 3.3 years' worth of land with planning permission.
The calculation is about how many homes CEC considers deliverable within the five-year period.
There are also homes with planning permission which aren't expected to be completed within that five-year window.
And that creates a very important distinction between:
LAND WITH PLANNING PERMISSION
and
HOUSES ACTUALLY BEING DELIVERED QUICKLY ENOUGH
So perhaps the most important question is:
DO WE HAVE A LAND SHORTAGE — OR A DELIVERY PROBLEM?
Before releasing more Green Belt or greenfield land, Cheshire East should put three simple figures side-by-side:
🏠 How many homes already have planning permission?
🏗️ How many of those are expected to be completed within five years?
⏳ How many permitted homes will take longer — and why?
If thousands of homes already have permission but aren't expected to be built quickly enough to count towards the five-year supply, simply allocating more land doesn't necessarily solve the underlying problem.
🏠 AND WHAT ABOUT THE GOVERNMENT'S 1.5 MILLION HOMES?
You've probably heard about the Government's ambition to deliver 1.5 million homes during this Parliament.
Here's something important:
THAT ISN'T 1.5 MILLION EXTRA HOMES ON TOP OF EVERYTHING THAT ALREADY HAS PLANNING PERMISSION.
Homes which already have planning permission can contribute towards that national total when they are actually completed during this Parliament.
So again, the question shouldn't simply be:
“HOW MUCH MORE LAND CAN WE ALLOCATE?”
It should also be:
“WHY AREN'T WE BUILDING THE HOMES THAT ALREADY HAVE PERMISSION?”
The Competition and Markets Authority has also examined housebuilders' build-out rates and the importance of local “absorption rates” — broadly, how quickly new homes can be sold into a local market without reducing prevailing prices.
Allocating more land therefore doesn't automatically mean houses will be built more quickly.
Before permanently releasing more countryside, residents deserve to understand whether we're principally dealing with:
a shortage of suitable land,
a shortage of permissions,
slow build-out,
infrastructure constraints,
market conditions,
or a combination of them.
📈 WERE THE LAST LOCAL PLAN'S GROWTH ASSUMPTIONS RIGHT?
The current Local Plan deliberately pursued an ambitious growth strategy.
There were people at the time who questioned whether some of those growth expectations were realistic.
We don't need to rerun that argument.
We now have something far more useful:
ACTUAL RESULTS.
Before another set of forecasts determines how many homes and how much land Cheshire East needs for decades to come, CEC should publish a simple scorecard:
WHAT WAS FORECAST — AND WHAT ACTUALLY HAPPENED?
Population growth.
Employment growth.
Jobs.
Housing completions.
Affordable housing.
Infrastructure.
If the previous forecasts proved accurate, show us.
If actual growth was materially different, explain why — and explain how that experience has influenced the assumptions being used this time.
Because getting a forecast wrong doesn't merely produce an inaccurate spreadsheet.
IT CAN AFFECT HOW MUCH LAND IS IDENTIFIED FOR DEVELOPMENT.
🚧 WHAT HAPPENED TO THE INFRASTRUCTURE?
Thousands of homes have been built under the current Local Plan.
But has everything else kept pace?
Schools?
Doctors and healthcare?
Roads?
Public transport?
Drainage?
Sewage capacity?
Don't assume another huge housing development automatically means a new school, GP surgery or major road improvement will appear alongside it.
Developers can apply to vary or remove planning conditions, and planning obligations can sometimes be renegotiated.
So Cheshire East should publish:
HOW MANY INFRASTRUCTURE REQUIREMENTS DURING THE CURRENT LOCAL PLAN PERIOD WERE LATER REMOVED, REDUCED, DEFERRED OR ALTERED?
How many involved highways?
Education?
Affordable housing?
Open space?
Community facilities?
How many were changed following viability arguments?
And what was the value of the infrastructure originally expected compared with what was ultimately delivered?
Because there's an enormous difference between saying:
“THIS DEVELOPMENT WILL COME WITH INFRASTRUCTURE”
and being able to say years later:
“THIS IS WHAT WAS ACTUALLY DELIVERED.”
🏫 SCHOOLS — CHESHIRE EAST ALREADY KNEW THERE WAS A RISK
Education provides a particularly useful example.
When the current Local Plan was being prepared, Cheshire East's own infrastructure evidence estimated that approved developments and Local Plan sites in Macclesfield could generate demand for approximately:
679 ADDITIONAL PRIMARY PLACES
and
536 ADDITIONAL SECONDARY PLACES
The Council described the situation as presenting a:
“HIGH RISK FOR THE LOCAL AUTHORITY.”
So this issue was known before the houses were built.
🏫 RESIDENTS WERE RAISING THIS IN 2018
In 2018 Henbury Parish Council challenged the cumulative education impact of three major developments around Chelford Road and Whirley Road.
CEC confirmed that education contributions being sought from those developments collectively amounted to:
£802,625 — Primary education
£947,875 — Secondary education
£227,500 — SEN education
TOTAL: £1,978,000
CEC said it was working with schools to determine where additional capacity should be created.
So the important question now isn't:
“WERE CONTRIBUTIONS REQUESTED?”
It's:
“WHAT WAS ACTUALLY DELIVERED, WHERE AND WHEN?”
🚌 WHERE DID THE CHILDREN GO?
Tytherington High School was subsequently expanded.
CEC's later information records 150 additional places through six additional classrooms, completed in September 2022.
That came more than four years after residents were asking where the additional children generated by these developments would actually go.
And look at the September 2026 admissions figures:
FALLIBROOME
240 places — 240 allocated
TYTHERINGTON
240 places — 240 allocated
MACCLESFIELD ACADEMY
120 places — 98 allocated
That illustrates why saying:
“There are some spare school places somewhere in Macclesfield”
isn't necessarily the same as:
“There are school places close to where the new families actually live.”
We should know:
Which schools do children from the new developments actually attend?
How far are they travelling?
Were additional places available when the houses were occupied?
Has home-to-school transport had to be provided because appropriate local places weren't available?
And, if so:
What has that cost?
🚦 WEAVER GREEN & BROKEN CROSS — SHOW US THE PAPERWORK
The Weaver Green planning permission contained a condition requiring the Broken Cross highway improvements to be completed to the:
“FULL WRITTEN SATISFACTION OF THE LOCAL PLANNING AUTHORITY”
BEFORE THE FIRST DWELLING WAS OCCUPIED.
Bellway subsequently applied to remove that condition.
That application was later withdrawn.
Residents were raising concerns in 2023 about homes apparently being occupied while issues at Broken Cross were still being raised.
Rather than make allegations without the paperwork, there's a very simple question:
SHOW US THE DOCUMENT AND THE DATE.
When did Cheshire East give its written satisfaction that the Broken Cross works required by Condition 6 were complete?
And:
WAS THAT BEFORE THE FIRST WEAVER GREEN RESIDENT MOVED IN?
If everything happened exactly as the planning permission required, that should be straightforward to answer.
Planning conditions exist for a reason.
If infrastructure is important enough to require it before occupation, residents should be able to expect that condition to mean something.
📋 AND THEN THERE'S SECTION 106
Cheshire East's own Internal Audit examined its arrangements for managing and monitoring Section 106 developer agreements and contributions.
Its overall assurance opinion was:
“NO ASSURANCE”
The Council subsequently began work to improve those arrangements.
But before another wave of major development, residents deserve to know:
WHAT WAS PROMISED?
WHAT WAS SECURED?
WHAT WAS LATER CHANGED?
WHAT WAS ACTUALLY DELIVERED?
AND WHEN DID IT ARRIVE RELATIVE TO THE HOUSES?
Developer contributions on a spreadsheet are not infrastructure.
A school place is infrastructure.
A completed road improvement is infrastructure.
A functioning drainage and sewage system is infrastructure.
Healthcare capacity is infrastructure.
❓ SO BEFORE WE RELEASE ANOTHER GENERATION OF LAND...
Let's properly examine what happened last time.
Did population and employment growth match the forecasts?
How many existing permissions remain unbuilt?
Why aren't all permitted sites delivering at the expected rate?
How much realistic brownfield capacity remains?
How much Green Belt was released?
How many genuinely lower-cost homes were actually produced?
How much developer infrastructure was originally promised?
How much was subsequently changed?
How much was actually delivered?
Were school places available when families moved in?
Did road improvements arrive when they were supposed to?
Did healthcare, drainage and sewage capacity keep pace?
These aren't anti-development questions.
Sent from Ru x
Comment
Local plan scoping consultation
Transport and infrastructure
Representation ID: 4795
Received: 23/08/2026
Respondent: Ruth Bass
This commentary argues that Cheshire East should assess whether infrastructure has kept pace with housing growth under the current Local Plan before allocating further development. It calls for transparency on infrastructure promised, altered or delivered, including schools, healthcare, transport, drainage and affordable housing. Examples cited include education capacity pressures in Macclesfield, the timing of school expansions, highway works linked to the Weaver Green development, and concerns raised by the Council’s audit of Section 106 monitoring. The key message is that future growth should be informed by evidence of what infrastructure was actually delivered, when it arrived, and whether it met the needs generated by development.
🏚️ Brownfield first
🌳 Green Belt protected unless further release is genuinely necessary
🏠 Genuinely affordable homes local people can actually buy
📋 Existing planning permissions properly accounted for
🏗️ Answers about why permitted sites aren't being built faster
🚧 Infrastructure before or alongside development
🏫 Enough school places
🩺 Enough healthcare capacity
🚗 Roads that can cope
💧 Drainage and sewage systems that can cope
“I support new housing where it is genuinely needed, but I want Cheshire East to prioritise suitable brownfield land, properly account for existing planning permissions, provide genuinely affordable homes local people can buy, ensure infrastructure is available alongside development and demonstrate why any further Green Belt release is necessary.”
Then add whatever particularly concerns you about your own area.
💷 WHAT DOES “AFFORDABLE HOUSING” ACTUALLY MEAN?
Here's a real Macclesfield comparison.
An older two-bedroom terraced house on Timber Street is currently being marketed on the open market for:
£149,950 — FOR 100% OF THE HOUSE
Now compare that with a new two-bedroom shared-ownership home at Heron View, offered as an affordable route into home ownership.
The headline advertised price is:
£75,625
That sounds dramatically cheaper.
But £75,625 doesn't buy the house.
It buys:
25% OF A PROPERTY VALUED AT £302,500
The buyer then has a mortgage on the 25% they purchase and pays rent on the remaining 75%, together with the applicable charges.
Using the figures advertised for this particular property:
Mortgage illustration: around £416 per month
Rent: £519.92 per month
Service charge: £35.85 per month
Management fee: £10 per month
That's approximately:
£982 PER MONTH
before council tax, gas, electricity, water, insurance and other household costs.
Compare that with the older Timber Street terrace:
TIMBER STREET
🏠 Price: £149,950
🔑 Ownership: 100%
💷 Illustrative mortgage previously shown: around £752 per month
HERON VIEW
🏠 Full property value: £302,500
💷 Initial purchase: £75,625
🔑 Ownership: 25%
💷 Approximate mortgage + rent + listed charges: £982 per month
The mortgage examples aren't directly like-for-like because deposits, mortgage rates and terms can differ.
But the fundamental comparison remains:
£149,950 BUYS AN ENTIRE EXISTING HOUSE.
£75,625 BUYS 25% OF THE NEW ONE.
And there's another important difference.
If the shared owner later moves while still owning 25%, they don't suddenly have the value of the whole property available for their next purchase. Their interest is their share, after taking account of their mortgage and selling costs.
They can potentially buy further shares through “staircasing”, but those additional shares have to be purchased.
Shared ownership can absolutely help some people and we're not knocking people who choose it.
But it isn't the same thing as building a genuinely inexpensive house that a first-time buyer can purchase outright.
🏠 SO WHY AREN'T WE BUILDING REAL FIRST-TIME BUYER HOMES?
If an existing two-bedroom Macclesfield terrace can be marketed on the open market for around £150,000, why shouldn't major new developments include smaller, simpler homes specifically aimed at first-time buyers at around that sort of price?
Not £300,000+ properties where £75,000 buys a quarter.
But:
A HOME COSTING AROUND £150,000 — FOR THE WHOLE HOME.
There is already a Government mechanism demonstrating that discounted outright ownership is possible.
Under First Homes, qualifying first-time buyers can purchase properties at a discount to market value, with the discount remaining attached to the property for future qualifying purchasers.
So why shouldn't Cheshire East investigate through its new Local Plan whether major developments should provide a meaningful proportion of:
GENUINE FIRST-TIME BUYER HOMES
OWNED OUTRIGHT
TARGETED AT AROUND £150,000 OR LESS WHERE LOCAL EVIDENCE SUPPORTS IT
If we're going to allocate land for thousands more houses, surely one of the most important questions is:
HOW MANY OF THOSE HOMES WILL A LOCAL YOUNG PERSON ACTUALLY BE ABLE TO BUY?
That's a much more useful affordability test than simply counting how many properties meet a technical definition of “affordable”.
WHAT DOES THE BUYER ACTUALLY PAY — AND WHAT DO THEY ACTUALLY OWN?
🏚️ BROWNFIELD FIRST
Before more countryside or Green Belt is considered for development, Cheshire East should give residents some straightforward answers.
How much suitable brownfield land is available?
How many homes could realistically be built on it?
How much brownfield land already has planning permission?
How much previously developed or allocated land remains unused?
Where brownfield sites aren't progressing, why not?
Not every brownfield site will be suitable for housing.
But surely the sensible order is:
1️⃣ Use existing planning permissions
2️⃣ Maximise realistic brownfield opportunities
3️⃣ Use suitable underused and redevelopment land
4️⃣ Only then consider whether more Green Belt or countryside is necessary
And residents are entitled to ask:
ARE SOME GREENFIELD SITES SIMPLY EASIER OR MORE COMMERCIALLY ATTRACTIVE TO DEVELOP THAN DIFFICULT BROWNFIELD SITES?
The Local Plan should be about what our communities need, not simply which land is easiest to develop.
🌳 WHAT ABOUT THE GREEN BELT?
The current Local Plan already released Green Belt land for housing.
In some locations, replacement Green Belt boundaries were specifically intended to endure in the long term.
We're now preparing another Local Plan.
So if we're considering crossing those boundaries again:
WHAT HAS MATERIALLY CHANGED?
Before more Green Belt is permanently lost, Cheshire East should demonstrate:
• what realistic brownfield alternatives exist;
• how many existing permissions remain unbuilt;
• why existing sites aren't delivering quickly enough;
• whether infrastructure has capacity; and
• why further Green Belt release is genuinely necessary.
We're not saying never build on Green Belt.
We're saying:
BROWNFIELD FIRST — AND PROVE THE NEED BEFORE LOSING MORE GREEN BELT.
🏗️ CHESHIRE EAST HAS ONLY A 3.3-YEAR HOUSING SUPPLY — BUT WHAT DOES THAT ACTUALLY MEAN?
Cheshire East's latest published assessment identifies:
8,780 deliverable homes
against a five-year requirement of:
13,162 homes
That produces a calculated five-year shortfall of:
4,382 HOMES
and a housing land supply of approximately:
3.3 YEARS
That is important.
But a 3.3-year housing land supply does NOT mean Cheshire East has only 3.3 years' worth of land with planning permission.
The calculation is about how many homes CEC considers deliverable within the five-year period.
There are also homes with planning permission which aren't expected to be completed within that five-year window.
And that creates a very important distinction between:
LAND WITH PLANNING PERMISSION
and
HOUSES ACTUALLY BEING DELIVERED QUICKLY ENOUGH
So perhaps the most important question is:
DO WE HAVE A LAND SHORTAGE — OR A DELIVERY PROBLEM?
Before releasing more Green Belt or greenfield land, Cheshire East should put three simple figures side-by-side:
🏠 How many homes already have planning permission?
🏗️ How many of those are expected to be completed within five years?
⏳ How many permitted homes will take longer — and why?
If thousands of homes already have permission but aren't expected to be built quickly enough to count towards the five-year supply, simply allocating more land doesn't necessarily solve the underlying problem.
🏠 AND WHAT ABOUT THE GOVERNMENT'S 1.5 MILLION HOMES?
You've probably heard about the Government's ambition to deliver 1.5 million homes during this Parliament.
Here's something important:
THAT ISN'T 1.5 MILLION EXTRA HOMES ON TOP OF EVERYTHING THAT ALREADY HAS PLANNING PERMISSION.
Homes which already have planning permission can contribute towards that national total when they are actually completed during this Parliament.
So again, the question shouldn't simply be:
“HOW MUCH MORE LAND CAN WE ALLOCATE?”
It should also be:
“WHY AREN'T WE BUILDING THE HOMES THAT ALREADY HAVE PERMISSION?”
The Competition and Markets Authority has also examined housebuilders' build-out rates and the importance of local “absorption rates” — broadly, how quickly new homes can be sold into a local market without reducing prevailing prices.
Allocating more land therefore doesn't automatically mean houses will be built more quickly.
Before permanently releasing more countryside, residents deserve to understand whether we're principally dealing with:
a shortage of suitable land,
a shortage of permissions,
slow build-out,
infrastructure constraints,
market conditions,
or a combination of them.
📈 WERE THE LAST LOCAL PLAN'S GROWTH ASSUMPTIONS RIGHT?
The current Local Plan deliberately pursued an ambitious growth strategy.
There were people at the time who questioned whether some of those growth expectations were realistic.
We don't need to rerun that argument.
We now have something far more useful:
ACTUAL RESULTS.
Before another set of forecasts determines how many homes and how much land Cheshire East needs for decades to come, CEC should publish a simple scorecard:
WHAT WAS FORECAST — AND WHAT ACTUALLY HAPPENED?
Population growth.
Employment growth.
Jobs.
Housing completions.
Affordable housing.
Infrastructure.
If the previous forecasts proved accurate, show us.
If actual growth was materially different, explain why — and explain how that experience has influenced the assumptions being used this time.
Because getting a forecast wrong doesn't merely produce an inaccurate spreadsheet.
IT CAN AFFECT HOW MUCH LAND IS IDENTIFIED FOR DEVELOPMENT.
🚧 WHAT HAPPENED TO THE INFRASTRUCTURE?
Thousands of homes have been built under the current Local Plan.
But has everything else kept pace?
Schools?
Doctors and healthcare?
Roads?
Public transport?
Drainage?
Sewage capacity?
Don't assume another huge housing development automatically means a new school, GP surgery or major road improvement will appear alongside it.
Developers can apply to vary or remove planning conditions, and planning obligations can sometimes be renegotiated.
So Cheshire East should publish:
HOW MANY INFRASTRUCTURE REQUIREMENTS DURING THE CURRENT LOCAL PLAN PERIOD WERE LATER REMOVED, REDUCED, DEFERRED OR ALTERED?
How many involved highways?
Education?
Affordable housing?
Open space?
Community facilities?
How many were changed following viability arguments?
And what was the value of the infrastructure originally expected compared with what was ultimately delivered?
Because there's an enormous difference between saying:
“THIS DEVELOPMENT WILL COME WITH INFRASTRUCTURE”
and being able to say years later:
“THIS IS WHAT WAS ACTUALLY DELIVERED.”
🏫 SCHOOLS — CHESHIRE EAST ALREADY KNEW THERE WAS A RISK
Education provides a particularly useful example.
When the current Local Plan was being prepared, Cheshire East's own infrastructure evidence estimated that approved developments and Local Plan sites in Macclesfield could generate demand for approximately:
679 ADDITIONAL PRIMARY PLACES
and
536 ADDITIONAL SECONDARY PLACES
The Council described the situation as presenting a:
“HIGH RISK FOR THE LOCAL AUTHORITY.”
So this issue was known before the houses were built.
🏫 RESIDENTS WERE RAISING THIS IN 2018
In 2018 Henbury Parish Council challenged the cumulative education impact of three major developments around Chelford Road and Whirley Road.
CEC confirmed that education contributions being sought from those developments collectively amounted to:
£802,625 — Primary education
£947,875 — Secondary education
£227,500 — SEN education
TOTAL: £1,978,000
CEC said it was working with schools to determine where additional capacity should be created.
So the important question now isn't:
“WERE CONTRIBUTIONS REQUESTED?”
It's:
“WHAT WAS ACTUALLY DELIVERED, WHERE AND WHEN?”
🚌 WHERE DID THE CHILDREN GO?
Tytherington High School was subsequently expanded.
CEC's later information records 150 additional places through six additional classrooms, completed in September 2022.
That came more than four years after residents were asking where the additional children generated by these developments would actually go.
And look at the September 2026 admissions figures:
FALLIBROOME
240 places — 240 allocated
TYTHERINGTON
240 places — 240 allocated
MACCLESFIELD ACADEMY
120 places — 98 allocated
That illustrates why saying:
“There are some spare school places somewhere in Macclesfield”
isn't necessarily the same as:
“There are school places close to where the new families actually live.”
We should know:
Which schools do children from the new developments actually attend?
How far are they travelling?
Were additional places available when the houses were occupied?
Has home-to-school transport had to be provided because appropriate local places weren't available?
And, if so:
What has that cost?
🚦 WEAVER GREEN & BROKEN CROSS — SHOW US THE PAPERWORK
The Weaver Green planning permission contained a condition requiring the Broken Cross highway improvements to be completed to the:
“FULL WRITTEN SATISFACTION OF THE LOCAL PLANNING AUTHORITY”
BEFORE THE FIRST DWELLING WAS OCCUPIED.
Bellway subsequently applied to remove that condition.
That application was later withdrawn.
Residents were raising concerns in 2023 about homes apparently being occupied while issues at Broken Cross were still being raised.
Rather than make allegations without the paperwork, there's a very simple question:
SHOW US THE DOCUMENT AND THE DATE.
When did Cheshire East give its written satisfaction that the Broken Cross works required by Condition 6 were complete?
And:
WAS THAT BEFORE THE FIRST WEAVER GREEN RESIDENT MOVED IN?
If everything happened exactly as the planning permission required, that should be straightforward to answer.
Planning conditions exist for a reason.
If infrastructure is important enough to require it before occupation, residents should be able to expect that condition to mean something.
📋 AND THEN THERE'S SECTION 106
Cheshire East's own Internal Audit examined its arrangements for managing and monitoring Section 106 developer agreements and contributions.
Its overall assurance opinion was:
“NO ASSURANCE”
The Council subsequently began work to improve those arrangements.
But before another wave of major development, residents deserve to know:
WHAT WAS PROMISED?
WHAT WAS SECURED?
WHAT WAS LATER CHANGED?
WHAT WAS ACTUALLY DELIVERED?
AND WHEN DID IT ARRIVE RELATIVE TO THE HOUSES?
Developer contributions on a spreadsheet are not infrastructure.
A school place is infrastructure.
A completed road improvement is infrastructure.
A functioning drainage and sewage system is infrastructure.
Healthcare capacity is infrastructure.
❓ SO BEFORE WE RELEASE ANOTHER GENERATION OF LAND...
Let's properly examine what happened last time.
Did population and employment growth match the forecasts?
How many existing permissions remain unbuilt?
Why aren't all permitted sites delivering at the expected rate?
How much realistic brownfield capacity remains?
How much Green Belt was released?
How many genuinely lower-cost homes were actually produced?
How much developer infrastructure was originally promised?
How much was subsequently changed?
How much was actually delivered?
Were school places available when families moved in?
Did road improvements arrive when they were supposed to?
Did healthcare, drainage and sewage capacity keep pace?
These aren't anti-development questions.
Sent from Ru x
