Local plan scoping consultation

To the Local Plan Team, Cheshire East Council,

I am writing as a resident of Cheshire East to formally register my objection as part of the scoping consultation for the new Local Plan, open until 5pm on 1 September 2026.

I am objecting specifically to site submission reference CFS26 208, address Colley Lane/Vicarage Lane, Betchton, Sandbach, a 7.57 hectare site submitted for housing through the council's call for sites process. I understand this stage of consultation does not itself allocate sites, but this submission will feed directly into the land availability assessment referred to in the scoping document (para 5.10), and I want my objection recorded against it at the earliest possible stage, ahead of any draft allocation.

This is productive, valued farmland, not a marginal or brownfield site. Once lost to development, agricultural land of this quality cannot be recovered, and its loss would be permanent and irreversible for the area. The scoping document itself acknowledges (para 5.25) that agricultural land quality is meant to be a genuine factor in deciding where development is distributed, yet recent experience in and around Sandbach gives me little confidence that this commitment will be honoured in substance rather than treated as a box-ticking exercise.

I would ask the council to note the clear double standard emerging locally. In 2010, an Inspector dismissed an appeal (ref APP/R0660/A/10/2131044) by residents of Mistal Loft, Vicarage Lane, Betchton, who simply wanted to convert a small area of agricultural land into residential garden. The Inspector found this modest change would harm the character and appearance of the area and would fail to preserve or enhance the setting of the nearby Grade II listed Boults Green Farm, noting that the predominant land use in the area is agricultural and that the site lies in open countryside. That decision stands as a formal, official recognition that this land - immediately adjacent to site CFS26 208 - has a rural and heritage character worth protecting, even against very small-scale change by an individual homeowner.

Compare that with the recent Bloor Homes appeal for up to 325 homes on land off The Hill/Manor Road, Sandbach (bordering Colley Lane), which the council's own planning committee refused but an Inspector allowed earlier this year. In that decision, the Inspector confirmed the site would result in the loss of both Grade 2 and Grade 3a agricultural land – classed as Best and Most Versatile Agricultural Land (BMVAL) – which both CELPS Policy SD2 and SADPD Policy RUR5 seek to avoid unless justified. The council and the appellant simply agreed between themselves that this loss amounted to "limited harm," a conclusion partly informed by an estimate that the land would generate roughly £4,300 a year in wheat crop value, and that limited harm was then weighed away against the benefits of the scheme. It should be noted that a wheat field should not simply be assessed by its value for one year. It would be more accurate to assess its value over hundreds of years although this would not serve the developer's purposes.

So an ordinary, tax-paying resident of Vicarage Lane can be refused permission to extend a garden because it would harm the rural character of this exact area, while a volume housebuilder can be granted permission to strip away hectares of the best agricultural land in the country because the council's own housing land supply is short. If that is the pattern, then the fine words in this scoping document about protecting agricultural land quality and rural character mean very little in practice, and I do not want to see the same reasoning applied to site CFS26 208.

More fundamentally, I object to the trajectory this plan represents for Sandbach and the surrounding villages. People choose to live in and around Sandbach precisely because it retains a distinct identity, a genuine rural edge, and a clear separation from Crewe and neighbouring settlements. Cheshire East's own document notes that a strategic green gap was created around Crewe specifically because "historic growth has reduced the separation between neighbouring settlements" and led to a loss of settlement identity. The same logic applies here: 7.57 hectares of housing on the fields between Sandbach and Betchton risks exactly that kind of coalescence and loss of identity that the council elsewhere claims to want to prevent. Designating Sandbach a Key Service Centre should not mean treating every submitted field on its edge as available for the taking, particularly when smaller, individual applications nearby have repeatedly been refused on precisely these grounds.

I am also concerned that the infrastructure, transport and school capacity implications of building on this land have not been properly evidenced. Vicarage Lane and Colley Lane are rural lanes, not roads designed to carry construction traffic or the volume of car journeys that a development of this scale would generate, and I have seen no assessment in the current consultation materials addressing this.

I ask that the council:
1. Confirm that site CFS26 208 will be assessed against agricultural land quality (including BMVAL status), landscape character and settlement separation as genuine constraints – not factors quietly agreed away as "limited harm" the moment housing land supply is under pressure.
2. Explain how it will avoid the inconsistency of refusing individual residents' modest applications on rural character and heritage grounds while allowing large-scale loss of the same character elsewhere in the same area.
3. Ensure the settlement hierarchy and spatial distribution work properly considers the cumulative impact of development on the separation between Sandbach and Betchton.
4. Record this letter as a formal early objection to site submission CFS26 208, to be carried forward and addressed substantively when the land availability assessment and draft site allocations are published for consultation.