Local plan scoping consultation

Three requests on engagement.

Publish town-level material in 2027. At the Plan Content and Evidence consultation, material should be published at town level — showing the growth options being considered for each settlement and their infrastructure and environmental implications — and not solely as borough-wide totals and policy principles. Residents can only respond meaningfully to a proposition whose local consequences they can see. If town-level options are not published in 2027, the first genuine opportunity for residents to engage with the scale of change proposed for their town will be the 2028 draft plan, by which point the strategy will in practice be settled.

Parity with site promoters. The strategy sets out a structured process for engaging with site promoters. I ask that communities and town and parish councils be offered engagement of comparable structure, frequency and formality, and that where the Council meets promoters to discuss sites a record of those meetings be published — in the interests of the transparency the strategy commits to at paragraphs 6.33 to 6.34.

Two points of process. First, I ask the Council to explain how the new local plan will be reconciled with the Spatial Development Strategy being prepared by the Cheshire and Warrington Combined Authority, with which the local plan must be in general conformity, and how residents will be able to influence that strategy — since a plan prepared above the borough may in practice determine how much growth is directed to well-connected towns near the M6, M56 and Manchester Airport. Second, in the analysis and summarising of representations, I ask that individual substantive points be recorded and responded to individually rather than aggregated into broad themes, and that the method used be set out openly. A point that is made once, precisely, should not disappear because it was not made by many people in the same words.