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Local plan scoping consultation
Increase in housing requirements
Representation ID: 5565
Received: 31/08/2026
Respondent: Ms Sheila Lachut
I would urge CEC to request a delayed implementation time frame for the new government building requirements rather than agreeing to any plans submitted in the short term. It is unfeasible to jncrease the housing ask by 30-50% yet have no time to develop a reasonable, considered plan.
Local Plan Scoping Consultation Submission 31.8.2026
I would urge CEC to request a delayed implementation time frame for the new government building requirements rather than agreeing to any plans submitted in the short term. It is unfeasible to jncrease the housing ask by 30-50% yet have no time to develop a reasonable, considered plan.
Brownfield First
I would request that CEC consider brownfield before considering further Green Belt development/release, the council should carry out & publish a proper assessment of brownfield sites, vacant buildings, stalled planning permissions, town-centre regeneration opportunities and underused public land. This should include a realistic assessment of what intervention would be needed to make difficult sites deliverable.
There are several empty properties for sale across the CEC area together with many planning permissions granted yet not started. CEC should consider reneging any planning permissions where there is no firm commitment to build in the next 3years (as an example).
The council should also reconsider its existing density expectations. "Build up, not out" as the government had repeatedly said. Policy HOU 14 generally expects at least 30 homes per net hectare. In light of the revised minimum housing need of 2,530 homes a year, or 37,950 over 15 years, the new plan should test increasing this to at least 40 homes per hectare in Macclesfield and other suitable locations.
Increasing density from 30 to 40 homes per hectare provides a third more homes on the same land and reduces the land needed for a fixed number of homes by 25%. Applied purely as an illustration to the 37,950-home requirement, this reduces the land requirement from around 1,265 hectares to 949 hectares, a difference of more than 300 hectares. Existing permissions, windfalls and brownfield sites would reduce both figures, but the proportional saving remains the same. CE council should publish different density scenarios and show how much greenfield land each would require.
Where greenfield or Green Belt land is considered, the council must also look at gross density: how many homes are delivered for every hectare of countryside lost. In the current local plan there are several examples of areas of poor return for the loss of green belt land that has been farmed for centuries, has significant biodiversity benefits and is providing an important role in stopping the sprawl of Macclesfield.
Both gross and net density should be published for every potential allocation.
Cheshire East should undertake a feasibility study into building council housing directly. Consideration should be given to council owned or controlled land and examine whether higher-density council and social housing could be delivered through direct development or partnerships with housing providers.
I volunteer at [REDACTED] and recognise the acute shortage of council housing across the CEC area.
Green Belt should not be released until these alternatives have been properly tested and the results published.
Protect Gaps Between Settlements
The submissions around Macclesfield must be assessed together. Taken collectively, those around Greenside / Prestbury Road could create a substantial new development front along Whirley Road, Sandy Lane, Birtles Road. the A537and Prestbury Road.
The local plan shows housing on green fields (currently filled with grazing cattle and sheep) reaching the edge of Prestbury. Although this will be defined as a village, by CEC, it means that Macclesfield will be merging with Prestbury at this edge of town where there is already issues with traffic flow and lack of infrastructure.
The council’s previous Green Belt work found that parcels MF11, MF08 and MF09 made a significant contribution to checking the unrestricted sprawl of Macclesfield. If a new assessment reaches a different conclusion, the council should explain clearly what evidence has changed.
The revised grey-belt approach does not mean that all Green Belt is equally available for development. Purpose A: checking the unrestricted sprawl of large built-up areas, is particularly relevant here. Annex E of the revised NPPFspecifically identifies an extended “finger” of development into the Green Belt as an indicator that land may make a strong contribution to preventing sprawl.
The council should not divide large Green Belt parcels into convenient smaller areas that disguise their wider function or allow promoters to nibble away at long-established boundaries. Birtles Road and Whirley Road have contained the outward spread of Macclesfield towards Prestbury and Henbury and helped protect the Alderley Edge wooded landscape for many years.
Any new settlement boundary must be clear, permanent and capable of resisting further expansion over the full plan period. None of the Greenside submissions provide an obvious defensible long-term boundary as examples.
Infrastructure Before Growth
Infrastructure must be assessed cumulatively across all the CEC and specifically for my comments, the Macclesfield proposals, not calculated separately for each submission.
Investment should be agreed with location, funding and delivery in place before house building on any scale is started. Investments are required for parks & green spaces, schooling, healthcare including hospitals, services, including water and sewerage, and transport including roads.
Examples of issues are already well documented in the area due to large housing developments. For example Whirley Primary School is already full.There are families living on the Greenside estate, close to the school, who have failed to obtain a place.
Water pressure has been negatively impacted by the new housing across Macclesfield.
Traffic must also be modelled cumulatively across a period of time, not just weekends. For Macclesfield the submissions on Priory Lane, Sandy Lane and Alderley Road will add traffic to what is a country road. Since Kings school has opened the road cannot cope with buses & large cars taking children to school. There has been no investment in the road other than directly outside Kings entrances and the road is falling away at the edges in many parts due to volume & weight of the traffic. Several local approaches are narrow or single track, have poor or missing pavements and contain chokepoints where widening would be extremely difficult because of existing homes.
The same principle applies to drainage, sewerage, healthcare, public transport, electricity and safe walking and cycling routes. Promises of future contributions are not enough. The council must show that improvements are physically possible, fully funded and delivered before the additional housebuilding be approved or begin.
Transparent and Evidence-Based Decisions
The council should publish one area-wide map and assessment covering every relevant submission around Macclesfield. It should show the combined housing assumption, likely access arrangements and cumulative effects on roads, schools, drainage, Green Belt, landscape and wildlife.
For every site, the council should publish both gross and net density, showing separately the land required for ecological and landscape buffers, drainage, overhead-line easements, access, open space and other mitigation.
Assessment criteria, evidence sources, assumptions and scoring should be published in full. Claims made by promoters should not be treated as facts without supporting evidence.
The evidence base should compare sites with genuine alternatives, including brownfield regeneration, higher-density development, direct council housebuilding, council-owned land and the safeguarded land south-west of Macclesfield. It should also show how different density assumptions affect the amount of Green Belt that might be required.
Local evidence must be taken seriously. Residents have direct experience of school-place refusals, school-run congestion, unsafe walking routes, unreliable bus services and surface-water flooding. These are existing problems, not theoretical objections to future housing.
Protect Nature and Landscape
The greenfield sites identified in the local plan includes peat lands (Danes Moss), mature hedgerows, trees, ponds and open fields.
CEC should not permit building on any peatland..
There are several studies already known to CEC about the wildlife in the county. I urge CEC to carefully consider the wildlife needs in any building plans.Where existing records show a realistic risk to protected or priority species, appropriate surveys should inform site selection. They should not be left to later stages and should be a key aspect of decision making in the early drafting of the local plan.
Assessment must consider the cumulative fragmentation of habitats and the effects of lighting, traffic, noise, domestic pets and increased recreational pressure. Biodiversity net gain should not be treated as permission to destroy established habitat and attempt to recreate it elsewhere. Avoiding harm must come first.
Many of the submitted sites around Maccesfield are active agricultural land used for arable farming or grazing. The loss of productive land, its contribution to food security and its role in responding to climate change should receive proper weight in a plan covering the next 15 years. As many residents have said, “once its gone, its gone”.
Residents also have photographic evidence of regular surface-water flooding in parts of the area. Drainage, soil conditions, water quality and flood risk must be considered across site boundaries, particularly where large areas of absorbent open land could be replaced by roads, roofs and hard surfaces.
Macclesfield as a Community
Macclesfield is a mill town with good access to countryside from all parts of the town. The propsed expansion of this scale will impact the very essence of the town and its likely to become more if a commuter town for Manchester. In the local plan, much is made of Macclesfield and surrounds history and countryside status yet CEC plan seems to ignore this.
CEC needs to have a clear plan for Macclesfield as it deserves more investment than Crewe, it generates a large income for CEC on council tax yet doesnt appear to have the same proportion of investment in infrastructure with part time policing and fire services, no full time Town hall services eg Registrars. CEC should be transparent in the plans to redress this if there is a large increase in housing in this area - not everyone can take a 2hour round trip to Crewe.
CEC need to carefully consider any increased housing based on theoretical increase in jobs in the area. There is no guarantee that existing employers in the area will continue to have the same level of employment in future years. The advent of AI, government decisions on taxes eg NI & business tax, can affect investment decisions from companies quoted in the local plan. Any local plan needs to be independent of these employment assumptions.
Next Steps
As the local plan develops CEC need to give residents longer to read, digest & comment on plans. There is an assumption within CEC that everyone is on social media and aware of these plans. I know my neighbours & colleagues were completely unaware of this plan and commenting timeline, and so CEC need to do much more to publicise the next steps & engage a higher proportion of residents.
Sheila Lachut
Resident in Macclesfield [REDACTED]
Comment
Local plan scoping consultation
Brownfield development
Representation ID: 5566
Received: 31/08/2026
Respondent: Ms Sheila Lachut
The respondent advocates a brownfield-first approach and asks the Council to assess vacant buildings, stalled permissions, regeneration opportunities and underused public land before releasing Green Belt. They propose testing higher housing densities, particularly in Macclesfield, and publishing gross and net density figures and different density scenarios to demonstrate potential reductions in greenfield land requirements. They also suggest reviewing unimplemented planning permissions and assessing opportunities for direct council housebuilding or partnerships with housing providers on council-controlled land. The respondent argues that Green Belt should not be released until these alternatives have been fully assessed and the findings published.
Local Plan Scoping Consultation Submission 31.8.2026
I would urge CEC to request a delayed implementation time frame for the new government building requirements rather than agreeing to any plans submitted in the short term. It is unfeasible to jncrease the housing ask by 30-50% yet have no time to develop a reasonable, considered plan.
Brownfield First
I would request that CEC consider brownfield before considering further Green Belt development/release, the council should carry out & publish a proper assessment of brownfield sites, vacant buildings, stalled planning permissions, town-centre regeneration opportunities and underused public land. This should include a realistic assessment of what intervention would be needed to make difficult sites deliverable.
There are several empty properties for sale across the CEC area together with many planning permissions granted yet not started. CEC should consider reneging any planning permissions where there is no firm commitment to build in the next 3years (as an example).
The council should also reconsider its existing density expectations. "Build up, not out" as the government had repeatedly said. Policy HOU 14 generally expects at least 30 homes per net hectare. In light of the revised minimum housing need of 2,530 homes a year, or 37,950 over 15 years, the new plan should test increasing this to at least 40 homes per hectare in Macclesfield and other suitable locations.
Increasing density from 30 to 40 homes per hectare provides a third more homes on the same land and reduces the land needed for a fixed number of homes by 25%. Applied purely as an illustration to the 37,950-home requirement, this reduces the land requirement from around 1,265 hectares to 949 hectares, a difference of more than 300 hectares. Existing permissions, windfalls and brownfield sites would reduce both figures, but the proportional saving remains the same. CE council should publish different density scenarios and show how much greenfield land each would require.
Where greenfield or Green Belt land is considered, the council must also look at gross density: how many homes are delivered for every hectare of countryside lost. In the current local plan there are several examples of areas of poor return for the loss of green belt land that has been farmed for centuries, has significant biodiversity benefits and is providing an important role in stopping the sprawl of Macclesfield.
Both gross and net density should be published for every potential allocation.
Cheshire East should undertake a feasibility study into building council housing directly. Consideration should be given to council owned or controlled land and examine whether higher-density council and social housing could be delivered through direct development or partnerships with housing providers.
I volunteer at [REDACTED] and recognise the acute shortage of council housing across the CEC area.
Green Belt should not be released until these alternatives have been properly tested and the results published.
Protect Gaps Between Settlements
The submissions around Macclesfield must be assessed together. Taken collectively, those around Greenside / Prestbury Road could create a substantial new development front along Whirley Road, Sandy Lane, Birtles Road. the A537and Prestbury Road.
The local plan shows housing on green fields (currently filled with grazing cattle and sheep) reaching the edge of Prestbury. Although this will be defined as a village, by CEC, it means that Macclesfield will be merging with Prestbury at this edge of town where there is already issues with traffic flow and lack of infrastructure.
The council’s previous Green Belt work found that parcels MF11, MF08 and MF09 made a significant contribution to checking the unrestricted sprawl of Macclesfield. If a new assessment reaches a different conclusion, the council should explain clearly what evidence has changed.
The revised grey-belt approach does not mean that all Green Belt is equally available for development. Purpose A: checking the unrestricted sprawl of large built-up areas, is particularly relevant here. Annex E of the revised NPPFspecifically identifies an extended “finger” of development into the Green Belt as an indicator that land may make a strong contribution to preventing sprawl.
The council should not divide large Green Belt parcels into convenient smaller areas that disguise their wider function or allow promoters to nibble away at long-established boundaries. Birtles Road and Whirley Road have contained the outward spread of Macclesfield towards Prestbury and Henbury and helped protect the Alderley Edge wooded landscape for many years.
Any new settlement boundary must be clear, permanent and capable of resisting further expansion over the full plan period. None of the Greenside submissions provide an obvious defensible long-term boundary as examples.
Infrastructure Before Growth
Infrastructure must be assessed cumulatively across all the CEC and specifically for my comments, the Macclesfield proposals, not calculated separately for each submission.
Investment should be agreed with location, funding and delivery in place before house building on any scale is started. Investments are required for parks & green spaces, schooling, healthcare including hospitals, services, including water and sewerage, and transport including roads.
Examples of issues are already well documented in the area due to large housing developments. For example Whirley Primary School is already full.There are families living on the Greenside estate, close to the school, who have failed to obtain a place.
Water pressure has been negatively impacted by the new housing across Macclesfield.
Traffic must also be modelled cumulatively across a period of time, not just weekends. For Macclesfield the submissions on Priory Lane, Sandy Lane and Alderley Road will add traffic to what is a country road. Since Kings school has opened the road cannot cope with buses & large cars taking children to school. There has been no investment in the road other than directly outside Kings entrances and the road is falling away at the edges in many parts due to volume & weight of the traffic. Several local approaches are narrow or single track, have poor or missing pavements and contain chokepoints where widening would be extremely difficult because of existing homes.
The same principle applies to drainage, sewerage, healthcare, public transport, electricity and safe walking and cycling routes. Promises of future contributions are not enough. The council must show that improvements are physically possible, fully funded and delivered before the additional housebuilding be approved or begin.
Transparent and Evidence-Based Decisions
The council should publish one area-wide map and assessment covering every relevant submission around Macclesfield. It should show the combined housing assumption, likely access arrangements and cumulative effects on roads, schools, drainage, Green Belt, landscape and wildlife.
For every site, the council should publish both gross and net density, showing separately the land required for ecological and landscape buffers, drainage, overhead-line easements, access, open space and other mitigation.
Assessment criteria, evidence sources, assumptions and scoring should be published in full. Claims made by promoters should not be treated as facts without supporting evidence.
The evidence base should compare sites with genuine alternatives, including brownfield regeneration, higher-density development, direct council housebuilding, council-owned land and the safeguarded land south-west of Macclesfield. It should also show how different density assumptions affect the amount of Green Belt that might be required.
Local evidence must be taken seriously. Residents have direct experience of school-place refusals, school-run congestion, unsafe walking routes, unreliable bus services and surface-water flooding. These are existing problems, not theoretical objections to future housing.
Protect Nature and Landscape
The greenfield sites identified in the local plan includes peat lands (Danes Moss), mature hedgerows, trees, ponds and open fields.
CEC should not permit building on any peatland..
There are several studies already known to CEC about the wildlife in the county. I urge CEC to carefully consider the wildlife needs in any building plans.Where existing records show a realistic risk to protected or priority species, appropriate surveys should inform site selection. They should not be left to later stages and should be a key aspect of decision making in the early drafting of the local plan.
Assessment must consider the cumulative fragmentation of habitats and the effects of lighting, traffic, noise, domestic pets and increased recreational pressure. Biodiversity net gain should not be treated as permission to destroy established habitat and attempt to recreate it elsewhere. Avoiding harm must come first.
Many of the submitted sites around Maccesfield are active agricultural land used for arable farming or grazing. The loss of productive land, its contribution to food security and its role in responding to climate change should receive proper weight in a plan covering the next 15 years. As many residents have said, “once its gone, its gone”.
Residents also have photographic evidence of regular surface-water flooding in parts of the area. Drainage, soil conditions, water quality and flood risk must be considered across site boundaries, particularly where large areas of absorbent open land could be replaced by roads, roofs and hard surfaces.
Macclesfield as a Community
Macclesfield is a mill town with good access to countryside from all parts of the town. The propsed expansion of this scale will impact the very essence of the town and its likely to become more if a commuter town for Manchester. In the local plan, much is made of Macclesfield and surrounds history and countryside status yet CEC plan seems to ignore this.
CEC needs to have a clear plan for Macclesfield as it deserves more investment than Crewe, it generates a large income for CEC on council tax yet doesnt appear to have the same proportion of investment in infrastructure with part time policing and fire services, no full time Town hall services eg Registrars. CEC should be transparent in the plans to redress this if there is a large increase in housing in this area - not everyone can take a 2hour round trip to Crewe.
CEC need to carefully consider any increased housing based on theoretical increase in jobs in the area. There is no guarantee that existing employers in the area will continue to have the same level of employment in future years. The advent of AI, government decisions on taxes eg NI & business tax, can affect investment decisions from companies quoted in the local plan. Any local plan needs to be independent of these employment assumptions.
Next Steps
As the local plan develops CEC need to give residents longer to read, digest & comment on plans. There is an assumption within CEC that everyone is on social media and aware of these plans. I know my neighbours & colleagues were completely unaware of this plan and commenting timeline, and so CEC need to do much more to publicise the next steps & engage a higher proportion of residents.
Sheila Lachut
Resident in Macclesfield [REDACTED]
Comment
Local plan scoping consultation
Strategic green gap
Representation ID: 5567
Received: 31/08/2026
Respondent: Ms Sheila Lachut
The respondent argues that development proposals around Macclesfield, particularly Greenside and Prestbury Road, should be assessed cumulatively due to their potential to extend development towards Prestbury and Henbury. They highlight previous Green Belt assessments identifying parcels MF11, MF08 and MF09 as important in preventing urban sprawl and request justification for any changed conclusions. Concerns are raised that dividing larger Green Belt areas could obscure their strategic function and progressively weaken established boundaries. The respondent considers Birtles Road and Whirley Road important in containing Macclesfield’s expansion and argues that any new settlement boundary should be clear, permanent and defensible.
Local Plan Scoping Consultation Submission 31.8.2026
I would urge CEC to request a delayed implementation time frame for the new government building requirements rather than agreeing to any plans submitted in the short term. It is unfeasible to jncrease the housing ask by 30-50% yet have no time to develop a reasonable, considered plan.
Brownfield First
I would request that CEC consider brownfield before considering further Green Belt development/release, the council should carry out & publish a proper assessment of brownfield sites, vacant buildings, stalled planning permissions, town-centre regeneration opportunities and underused public land. This should include a realistic assessment of what intervention would be needed to make difficult sites deliverable.
There are several empty properties for sale across the CEC area together with many planning permissions granted yet not started. CEC should consider reneging any planning permissions where there is no firm commitment to build in the next 3years (as an example).
The council should also reconsider its existing density expectations. "Build up, not out" as the government had repeatedly said. Policy HOU 14 generally expects at least 30 homes per net hectare. In light of the revised minimum housing need of 2,530 homes a year, or 37,950 over 15 years, the new plan should test increasing this to at least 40 homes per hectare in Macclesfield and other suitable locations.
Increasing density from 30 to 40 homes per hectare provides a third more homes on the same land and reduces the land needed for a fixed number of homes by 25%. Applied purely as an illustration to the 37,950-home requirement, this reduces the land requirement from around 1,265 hectares to 949 hectares, a difference of more than 300 hectares. Existing permissions, windfalls and brownfield sites would reduce both figures, but the proportional saving remains the same. CE council should publish different density scenarios and show how much greenfield land each would require.
Where greenfield or Green Belt land is considered, the council must also look at gross density: how many homes are delivered for every hectare of countryside lost. In the current local plan there are several examples of areas of poor return for the loss of green belt land that has been farmed for centuries, has significant biodiversity benefits and is providing an important role in stopping the sprawl of Macclesfield.
Both gross and net density should be published for every potential allocation.
Cheshire East should undertake a feasibility study into building council housing directly. Consideration should be given to council owned or controlled land and examine whether higher-density council and social housing could be delivered through direct development or partnerships with housing providers.
I volunteer at [REDACTED] and recognise the acute shortage of council housing across the CEC area.
Green Belt should not be released until these alternatives have been properly tested and the results published.
Protect Gaps Between Settlements
The submissions around Macclesfield must be assessed together. Taken collectively, those around Greenside / Prestbury Road could create a substantial new development front along Whirley Road, Sandy Lane, Birtles Road. the A537and Prestbury Road.
The local plan shows housing on green fields (currently filled with grazing cattle and sheep) reaching the edge of Prestbury. Although this will be defined as a village, by CEC, it means that Macclesfield will be merging with Prestbury at this edge of town where there is already issues with traffic flow and lack of infrastructure.
The council’s previous Green Belt work found that parcels MF11, MF08 and MF09 made a significant contribution to checking the unrestricted sprawl of Macclesfield. If a new assessment reaches a different conclusion, the council should explain clearly what evidence has changed.
The revised grey-belt approach does not mean that all Green Belt is equally available for development. Purpose A: checking the unrestricted sprawl of large built-up areas, is particularly relevant here. Annex E of the revised NPPFspecifically identifies an extended “finger” of development into the Green Belt as an indicator that land may make a strong contribution to preventing sprawl.
The council should not divide large Green Belt parcels into convenient smaller areas that disguise their wider function or allow promoters to nibble away at long-established boundaries. Birtles Road and Whirley Road have contained the outward spread of Macclesfield towards Prestbury and Henbury and helped protect the Alderley Edge wooded landscape for many years.
Any new settlement boundary must be clear, permanent and capable of resisting further expansion over the full plan period. None of the Greenside submissions provide an obvious defensible long-term boundary as examples.
Infrastructure Before Growth
Infrastructure must be assessed cumulatively across all the CEC and specifically for my comments, the Macclesfield proposals, not calculated separately for each submission.
Investment should be agreed with location, funding and delivery in place before house building on any scale is started. Investments are required for parks & green spaces, schooling, healthcare including hospitals, services, including water and sewerage, and transport including roads.
Examples of issues are already well documented in the area due to large housing developments. For example Whirley Primary School is already full.There are families living on the Greenside estate, close to the school, who have failed to obtain a place.
Water pressure has been negatively impacted by the new housing across Macclesfield.
Traffic must also be modelled cumulatively across a period of time, not just weekends. For Macclesfield the submissions on Priory Lane, Sandy Lane and Alderley Road will add traffic to what is a country road. Since Kings school has opened the road cannot cope with buses & large cars taking children to school. There has been no investment in the road other than directly outside Kings entrances and the road is falling away at the edges in many parts due to volume & weight of the traffic. Several local approaches are narrow or single track, have poor or missing pavements and contain chokepoints where widening would be extremely difficult because of existing homes.
The same principle applies to drainage, sewerage, healthcare, public transport, electricity and safe walking and cycling routes. Promises of future contributions are not enough. The council must show that improvements are physically possible, fully funded and delivered before the additional housebuilding be approved or begin.
Transparent and Evidence-Based Decisions
The council should publish one area-wide map and assessment covering every relevant submission around Macclesfield. It should show the combined housing assumption, likely access arrangements and cumulative effects on roads, schools, drainage, Green Belt, landscape and wildlife.
For every site, the council should publish both gross and net density, showing separately the land required for ecological and landscape buffers, drainage, overhead-line easements, access, open space and other mitigation.
Assessment criteria, evidence sources, assumptions and scoring should be published in full. Claims made by promoters should not be treated as facts without supporting evidence.
The evidence base should compare sites with genuine alternatives, including brownfield regeneration, higher-density development, direct council housebuilding, council-owned land and the safeguarded land south-west of Macclesfield. It should also show how different density assumptions affect the amount of Green Belt that might be required.
Local evidence must be taken seriously. Residents have direct experience of school-place refusals, school-run congestion, unsafe walking routes, unreliable bus services and surface-water flooding. These are existing problems, not theoretical objections to future housing.
Protect Nature and Landscape
The greenfield sites identified in the local plan includes peat lands (Danes Moss), mature hedgerows, trees, ponds and open fields.
CEC should not permit building on any peatland..
There are several studies already known to CEC about the wildlife in the county. I urge CEC to carefully consider the wildlife needs in any building plans.Where existing records show a realistic risk to protected or priority species, appropriate surveys should inform site selection. They should not be left to later stages and should be a key aspect of decision making in the early drafting of the local plan.
Assessment must consider the cumulative fragmentation of habitats and the effects of lighting, traffic, noise, domestic pets and increased recreational pressure. Biodiversity net gain should not be treated as permission to destroy established habitat and attempt to recreate it elsewhere. Avoiding harm must come first.
Many of the submitted sites around Maccesfield are active agricultural land used for arable farming or grazing. The loss of productive land, its contribution to food security and its role in responding to climate change should receive proper weight in a plan covering the next 15 years. As many residents have said, “once its gone, its gone”.
Residents also have photographic evidence of regular surface-water flooding in parts of the area. Drainage, soil conditions, water quality and flood risk must be considered across site boundaries, particularly where large areas of absorbent open land could be replaced by roads, roofs and hard surfaces.
Macclesfield as a Community
Macclesfield is a mill town with good access to countryside from all parts of the town. The propsed expansion of this scale will impact the very essence of the town and its likely to become more if a commuter town for Manchester. In the local plan, much is made of Macclesfield and surrounds history and countryside status yet CEC plan seems to ignore this.
CEC needs to have a clear plan for Macclesfield as it deserves more investment than Crewe, it generates a large income for CEC on council tax yet doesnt appear to have the same proportion of investment in infrastructure with part time policing and fire services, no full time Town hall services eg Registrars. CEC should be transparent in the plans to redress this if there is a large increase in housing in this area - not everyone can take a 2hour round trip to Crewe.
CEC need to carefully consider any increased housing based on theoretical increase in jobs in the area. There is no guarantee that existing employers in the area will continue to have the same level of employment in future years. The advent of AI, government decisions on taxes eg NI & business tax, can affect investment decisions from companies quoted in the local plan. Any local plan needs to be independent of these employment assumptions.
Next Steps
As the local plan develops CEC need to give residents longer to read, digest & comment on plans. There is an assumption within CEC that everyone is on social media and aware of these plans. I know my neighbours & colleagues were completely unaware of this plan and commenting timeline, and so CEC need to do much more to publicise the next steps & engage a higher proportion of residents.
Sheila Lachut
Resident in Macclesfield [REDACTED]
Comment
Local plan scoping consultation
Transport and infrastructure
Representation ID: 5568
Received: 31/08/2026
Respondent: Ms Sheila Lachut
The respondent argues that infrastructure impacts from proposed development should be assessed cumulatively across Cheshire East and particularly Macclesfield. They seek confirmed funding and delivery of necessary infrastructure before housebuilding begins, including schools, healthcare, utilities, roads, green spaces and sustainable transport. Existing concerns include school capacity, reduced water pressure, congestion and deterioration of rural roads. The respondent calls for cumulative traffic modelling and highlights narrow roads, inadequate pavements and physical constraints on improvements. They argue that drainage, sewerage, electricity, public transport and walking and cycling infrastructure must also be demonstrated as deliverable and fully funded before additional development proceeds.
Local Plan Scoping Consultation Submission 31.8.2026
I would urge CEC to request a delayed implementation time frame for the new government building requirements rather than agreeing to any plans submitted in the short term. It is unfeasible to jncrease the housing ask by 30-50% yet have no time to develop a reasonable, considered plan.
Brownfield First
I would request that CEC consider brownfield before considering further Green Belt development/release, the council should carry out & publish a proper assessment of brownfield sites, vacant buildings, stalled planning permissions, town-centre regeneration opportunities and underused public land. This should include a realistic assessment of what intervention would be needed to make difficult sites deliverable.
There are several empty properties for sale across the CEC area together with many planning permissions granted yet not started. CEC should consider reneging any planning permissions where there is no firm commitment to build in the next 3years (as an example).
The council should also reconsider its existing density expectations. "Build up, not out" as the government had repeatedly said. Policy HOU 14 generally expects at least 30 homes per net hectare. In light of the revised minimum housing need of 2,530 homes a year, or 37,950 over 15 years, the new plan should test increasing this to at least 40 homes per hectare in Macclesfield and other suitable locations.
Increasing density from 30 to 40 homes per hectare provides a third more homes on the same land and reduces the land needed for a fixed number of homes by 25%. Applied purely as an illustration to the 37,950-home requirement, this reduces the land requirement from around 1,265 hectares to 949 hectares, a difference of more than 300 hectares. Existing permissions, windfalls and brownfield sites would reduce both figures, but the proportional saving remains the same. CE council should publish different density scenarios and show how much greenfield land each would require.
Where greenfield or Green Belt land is considered, the council must also look at gross density: how many homes are delivered for every hectare of countryside lost. In the current local plan there are several examples of areas of poor return for the loss of green belt land that has been farmed for centuries, has significant biodiversity benefits and is providing an important role in stopping the sprawl of Macclesfield.
Both gross and net density should be published for every potential allocation.
Cheshire East should undertake a feasibility study into building council housing directly. Consideration should be given to council owned or controlled land and examine whether higher-density council and social housing could be delivered through direct development or partnerships with housing providers.
I volunteer at [REDACTED] and recognise the acute shortage of council housing across the CEC area.
Green Belt should not be released until these alternatives have been properly tested and the results published.
Protect Gaps Between Settlements
The submissions around Macclesfield must be assessed together. Taken collectively, those around Greenside / Prestbury Road could create a substantial new development front along Whirley Road, Sandy Lane, Birtles Road. the A537and Prestbury Road.
The local plan shows housing on green fields (currently filled with grazing cattle and sheep) reaching the edge of Prestbury. Although this will be defined as a village, by CEC, it means that Macclesfield will be merging with Prestbury at this edge of town where there is already issues with traffic flow and lack of infrastructure.
The council’s previous Green Belt work found that parcels MF11, MF08 and MF09 made a significant contribution to checking the unrestricted sprawl of Macclesfield. If a new assessment reaches a different conclusion, the council should explain clearly what evidence has changed.
The revised grey-belt approach does not mean that all Green Belt is equally available for development. Purpose A: checking the unrestricted sprawl of large built-up areas, is particularly relevant here. Annex E of the revised NPPFspecifically identifies an extended “finger” of development into the Green Belt as an indicator that land may make a strong contribution to preventing sprawl.
The council should not divide large Green Belt parcels into convenient smaller areas that disguise their wider function or allow promoters to nibble away at long-established boundaries. Birtles Road and Whirley Road have contained the outward spread of Macclesfield towards Prestbury and Henbury and helped protect the Alderley Edge wooded landscape for many years.
Any new settlement boundary must be clear, permanent and capable of resisting further expansion over the full plan period. None of the Greenside submissions provide an obvious defensible long-term boundary as examples.
Infrastructure Before Growth
Infrastructure must be assessed cumulatively across all the CEC and specifically for my comments, the Macclesfield proposals, not calculated separately for each submission.
Investment should be agreed with location, funding and delivery in place before house building on any scale is started. Investments are required for parks & green spaces, schooling, healthcare including hospitals, services, including water and sewerage, and transport including roads.
Examples of issues are already well documented in the area due to large housing developments. For example Whirley Primary School is already full.There are families living on the Greenside estate, close to the school, who have failed to obtain a place.
Water pressure has been negatively impacted by the new housing across Macclesfield.
Traffic must also be modelled cumulatively across a period of time, not just weekends. For Macclesfield the submissions on Priory Lane, Sandy Lane and Alderley Road will add traffic to what is a country road. Since Kings school has opened the road cannot cope with buses & large cars taking children to school. There has been no investment in the road other than directly outside Kings entrances and the road is falling away at the edges in many parts due to volume & weight of the traffic. Several local approaches are narrow or single track, have poor or missing pavements and contain chokepoints where widening would be extremely difficult because of existing homes.
The same principle applies to drainage, sewerage, healthcare, public transport, electricity and safe walking and cycling routes. Promises of future contributions are not enough. The council must show that improvements are physically possible, fully funded and delivered before the additional housebuilding be approved or begin.
Transparent and Evidence-Based Decisions
The council should publish one area-wide map and assessment covering every relevant submission around Macclesfield. It should show the combined housing assumption, likely access arrangements and cumulative effects on roads, schools, drainage, Green Belt, landscape and wildlife.
For every site, the council should publish both gross and net density, showing separately the land required for ecological and landscape buffers, drainage, overhead-line easements, access, open space and other mitigation.
Assessment criteria, evidence sources, assumptions and scoring should be published in full. Claims made by promoters should not be treated as facts without supporting evidence.
The evidence base should compare sites with genuine alternatives, including brownfield regeneration, higher-density development, direct council housebuilding, council-owned land and the safeguarded land south-west of Macclesfield. It should also show how different density assumptions affect the amount of Green Belt that might be required.
Local evidence must be taken seriously. Residents have direct experience of school-place refusals, school-run congestion, unsafe walking routes, unreliable bus services and surface-water flooding. These are existing problems, not theoretical objections to future housing.
Protect Nature and Landscape
The greenfield sites identified in the local plan includes peat lands (Danes Moss), mature hedgerows, trees, ponds and open fields.
CEC should not permit building on any peatland..
There are several studies already known to CEC about the wildlife in the county. I urge CEC to carefully consider the wildlife needs in any building plans.Where existing records show a realistic risk to protected or priority species, appropriate surveys should inform site selection. They should not be left to later stages and should be a key aspect of decision making in the early drafting of the local plan.
Assessment must consider the cumulative fragmentation of habitats and the effects of lighting, traffic, noise, domestic pets and increased recreational pressure. Biodiversity net gain should not be treated as permission to destroy established habitat and attempt to recreate it elsewhere. Avoiding harm must come first.
Many of the submitted sites around Maccesfield are active agricultural land used for arable farming or grazing. The loss of productive land, its contribution to food security and its role in responding to climate change should receive proper weight in a plan covering the next 15 years. As many residents have said, “once its gone, its gone”.
Residents also have photographic evidence of regular surface-water flooding in parts of the area. Drainage, soil conditions, water quality and flood risk must be considered across site boundaries, particularly where large areas of absorbent open land could be replaced by roads, roofs and hard surfaces.
Macclesfield as a Community
Macclesfield is a mill town with good access to countryside from all parts of the town. The propsed expansion of this scale will impact the very essence of the town and its likely to become more if a commuter town for Manchester. In the local plan, much is made of Macclesfield and surrounds history and countryside status yet CEC plan seems to ignore this.
CEC needs to have a clear plan for Macclesfield as it deserves more investment than Crewe, it generates a large income for CEC on council tax yet doesnt appear to have the same proportion of investment in infrastructure with part time policing and fire services, no full time Town hall services eg Registrars. CEC should be transparent in the plans to redress this if there is a large increase in housing in this area - not everyone can take a 2hour round trip to Crewe.
CEC need to carefully consider any increased housing based on theoretical increase in jobs in the area. There is no guarantee that existing employers in the area will continue to have the same level of employment in future years. The advent of AI, government decisions on taxes eg NI & business tax, can affect investment decisions from companies quoted in the local plan. Any local plan needs to be independent of these employment assumptions.
Next Steps
As the local plan develops CEC need to give residents longer to read, digest & comment on plans. There is an assumption within CEC that everyone is on social media and aware of these plans. I know my neighbours & colleagues were completely unaware of this plan and commenting timeline, and so CEC need to do much more to publicise the next steps & engage a higher proportion of residents.
Sheila Lachut
Resident in Macclesfield [REDACTED]
Comment
Local plan scoping consultation
Local plan evidence base
Representation ID: 5569
Received: 31/08/2026
Respondent: Ms Sheila Lachut
The respondent calls for a transparent, area-wide assessment of development proposals around Macclesfield, showing cumulative impacts on infrastructure, Green Belt, landscape and wildlife. They request publication of gross and net densities, site constraints, assessment criteria, evidence, assumptions and scoring. The evidence base should compare proposed sites with alternatives including brownfield regeneration, higher-density development, council housebuilding, council-owned land and safeguarded land. The respondent also argues that site promoters’ claims should be supported by evidence and that residents’ experiences of school capacity, congestion, unsafe walking routes, unreliable public transport and surface-water flooding should inform the assessment process.
Local Plan Scoping Consultation Submission 31.8.2026
I would urge CEC to request a delayed implementation time frame for the new government building requirements rather than agreeing to any plans submitted in the short term. It is unfeasible to jncrease the housing ask by 30-50% yet have no time to develop a reasonable, considered plan.
Brownfield First
I would request that CEC consider brownfield before considering further Green Belt development/release, the council should carry out & publish a proper assessment of brownfield sites, vacant buildings, stalled planning permissions, town-centre regeneration opportunities and underused public land. This should include a realistic assessment of what intervention would be needed to make difficult sites deliverable.
There are several empty properties for sale across the CEC area together with many planning permissions granted yet not started. CEC should consider reneging any planning permissions where there is no firm commitment to build in the next 3years (as an example).
The council should also reconsider its existing density expectations. "Build up, not out" as the government had repeatedly said. Policy HOU 14 generally expects at least 30 homes per net hectare. In light of the revised minimum housing need of 2,530 homes a year, or 37,950 over 15 years, the new plan should test increasing this to at least 40 homes per hectare in Macclesfield and other suitable locations.
Increasing density from 30 to 40 homes per hectare provides a third more homes on the same land and reduces the land needed for a fixed number of homes by 25%. Applied purely as an illustration to the 37,950-home requirement, this reduces the land requirement from around 1,265 hectares to 949 hectares, a difference of more than 300 hectares. Existing permissions, windfalls and brownfield sites would reduce both figures, but the proportional saving remains the same. CE council should publish different density scenarios and show how much greenfield land each would require.
Where greenfield or Green Belt land is considered, the council must also look at gross density: how many homes are delivered for every hectare of countryside lost. In the current local plan there are several examples of areas of poor return for the loss of green belt land that has been farmed for centuries, has significant biodiversity benefits and is providing an important role in stopping the sprawl of Macclesfield.
Both gross and net density should be published for every potential allocation.
Cheshire East should undertake a feasibility study into building council housing directly. Consideration should be given to council owned or controlled land and examine whether higher-density council and social housing could be delivered through direct development or partnerships with housing providers.
I volunteer at [REDACTED] and recognise the acute shortage of council housing across the CEC area.
Green Belt should not be released until these alternatives have been properly tested and the results published.
Protect Gaps Between Settlements
The submissions around Macclesfield must be assessed together. Taken collectively, those around Greenside / Prestbury Road could create a substantial new development front along Whirley Road, Sandy Lane, Birtles Road. the A537and Prestbury Road.
The local plan shows housing on green fields (currently filled with grazing cattle and sheep) reaching the edge of Prestbury. Although this will be defined as a village, by CEC, it means that Macclesfield will be merging with Prestbury at this edge of town where there is already issues with traffic flow and lack of infrastructure.
The council’s previous Green Belt work found that parcels MF11, MF08 and MF09 made a significant contribution to checking the unrestricted sprawl of Macclesfield. If a new assessment reaches a different conclusion, the council should explain clearly what evidence has changed.
The revised grey-belt approach does not mean that all Green Belt is equally available for development. Purpose A: checking the unrestricted sprawl of large built-up areas, is particularly relevant here. Annex E of the revised NPPFspecifically identifies an extended “finger” of development into the Green Belt as an indicator that land may make a strong contribution to preventing sprawl.
The council should not divide large Green Belt parcels into convenient smaller areas that disguise their wider function or allow promoters to nibble away at long-established boundaries. Birtles Road and Whirley Road have contained the outward spread of Macclesfield towards Prestbury and Henbury and helped protect the Alderley Edge wooded landscape for many years.
Any new settlement boundary must be clear, permanent and capable of resisting further expansion over the full plan period. None of the Greenside submissions provide an obvious defensible long-term boundary as examples.
Infrastructure Before Growth
Infrastructure must be assessed cumulatively across all the CEC and specifically for my comments, the Macclesfield proposals, not calculated separately for each submission.
Investment should be agreed with location, funding and delivery in place before house building on any scale is started. Investments are required for parks & green spaces, schooling, healthcare including hospitals, services, including water and sewerage, and transport including roads.
Examples of issues are already well documented in the area due to large housing developments. For example Whirley Primary School is already full.There are families living on the Greenside estate, close to the school, who have failed to obtain a place.
Water pressure has been negatively impacted by the new housing across Macclesfield.
Traffic must also be modelled cumulatively across a period of time, not just weekends. For Macclesfield the submissions on Priory Lane, Sandy Lane and Alderley Road will add traffic to what is a country road. Since Kings school has opened the road cannot cope with buses & large cars taking children to school. There has been no investment in the road other than directly outside Kings entrances and the road is falling away at the edges in many parts due to volume & weight of the traffic. Several local approaches are narrow or single track, have poor or missing pavements and contain chokepoints where widening would be extremely difficult because of existing homes.
The same principle applies to drainage, sewerage, healthcare, public transport, electricity and safe walking and cycling routes. Promises of future contributions are not enough. The council must show that improvements are physically possible, fully funded and delivered before the additional housebuilding be approved or begin.
Transparent and Evidence-Based Decisions
The council should publish one area-wide map and assessment covering every relevant submission around Macclesfield. It should show the combined housing assumption, likely access arrangements and cumulative effects on roads, schools, drainage, Green Belt, landscape and wildlife.
For every site, the council should publish both gross and net density, showing separately the land required for ecological and landscape buffers, drainage, overhead-line easements, access, open space and other mitigation.
Assessment criteria, evidence sources, assumptions and scoring should be published in full. Claims made by promoters should not be treated as facts without supporting evidence.
The evidence base should compare sites with genuine alternatives, including brownfield regeneration, higher-density development, direct council housebuilding, council-owned land and the safeguarded land south-west of Macclesfield. It should also show how different density assumptions affect the amount of Green Belt that might be required.
Local evidence must be taken seriously. Residents have direct experience of school-place refusals, school-run congestion, unsafe walking routes, unreliable bus services and surface-water flooding. These are existing problems, not theoretical objections to future housing.
Protect Nature and Landscape
The greenfield sites identified in the local plan includes peat lands (Danes Moss), mature hedgerows, trees, ponds and open fields.
CEC should not permit building on any peatland..
There are several studies already known to CEC about the wildlife in the county. I urge CEC to carefully consider the wildlife needs in any building plans.Where existing records show a realistic risk to protected or priority species, appropriate surveys should inform site selection. They should not be left to later stages and should be a key aspect of decision making in the early drafting of the local plan.
Assessment must consider the cumulative fragmentation of habitats and the effects of lighting, traffic, noise, domestic pets and increased recreational pressure. Biodiversity net gain should not be treated as permission to destroy established habitat and attempt to recreate it elsewhere. Avoiding harm must come first.
Many of the submitted sites around Maccesfield are active agricultural land used for arable farming or grazing. The loss of productive land, its contribution to food security and its role in responding to climate change should receive proper weight in a plan covering the next 15 years. As many residents have said, “once its gone, its gone”.
Residents also have photographic evidence of regular surface-water flooding in parts of the area. Drainage, soil conditions, water quality and flood risk must be considered across site boundaries, particularly where large areas of absorbent open land could be replaced by roads, roofs and hard surfaces.
Macclesfield as a Community
Macclesfield is a mill town with good access to countryside from all parts of the town. The propsed expansion of this scale will impact the very essence of the town and its likely to become more if a commuter town for Manchester. In the local plan, much is made of Macclesfield and surrounds history and countryside status yet CEC plan seems to ignore this.
CEC needs to have a clear plan for Macclesfield as it deserves more investment than Crewe, it generates a large income for CEC on council tax yet doesnt appear to have the same proportion of investment in infrastructure with part time policing and fire services, no full time Town hall services eg Registrars. CEC should be transparent in the plans to redress this if there is a large increase in housing in this area - not everyone can take a 2hour round trip to Crewe.
CEC need to carefully consider any increased housing based on theoretical increase in jobs in the area. There is no guarantee that existing employers in the area will continue to have the same level of employment in future years. The advent of AI, government decisions on taxes eg NI & business tax, can affect investment decisions from companies quoted in the local plan. Any local plan needs to be independent of these employment assumptions.
Next Steps
As the local plan develops CEC need to give residents longer to read, digest & comment on plans. There is an assumption within CEC that everyone is on social media and aware of these plans. I know my neighbours & colleagues were completely unaware of this plan and commenting timeline, and so CEC need to do much more to publicise the next steps & engage a higher proportion of residents.
Sheila Lachut
Resident in Macclesfield [REDACTED]
Comment
Local plan scoping consultation
Natural environment
Representation ID: 5570
Received: 31/08/2026
Respondent: Ms Sheila Lachut
The respondent calls for stronger protection of peatland, wildlife habitats and agricultural land when assessing potential development sites. They argue that ecological surveys should inform site selection at an early stage where protected or priority species may be affected, and that cumulative habitat fragmentation and impacts from lighting, traffic, noise, pets and recreation should be considered. They oppose development on peatland and caution against relying on biodiversity net gain to compensate for established habitat loss. Concerns are also raised about the loss of productive farmland, food security, climate change and existing surface-water flooding, with drainage and flood risk assessed across site boundaries.
Local Plan Scoping Consultation Submission 31.8.2026
I would urge CEC to request a delayed implementation time frame for the new government building requirements rather than agreeing to any plans submitted in the short term. It is unfeasible to jncrease the housing ask by 30-50% yet have no time to develop a reasonable, considered plan.
Brownfield First
I would request that CEC consider brownfield before considering further Green Belt development/release, the council should carry out & publish a proper assessment of brownfield sites, vacant buildings, stalled planning permissions, town-centre regeneration opportunities and underused public land. This should include a realistic assessment of what intervention would be needed to make difficult sites deliverable.
There are several empty properties for sale across the CEC area together with many planning permissions granted yet not started. CEC should consider reneging any planning permissions where there is no firm commitment to build in the next 3years (as an example).
The council should also reconsider its existing density expectations. "Build up, not out" as the government had repeatedly said. Policy HOU 14 generally expects at least 30 homes per net hectare. In light of the revised minimum housing need of 2,530 homes a year, or 37,950 over 15 years, the new plan should test increasing this to at least 40 homes per hectare in Macclesfield and other suitable locations.
Increasing density from 30 to 40 homes per hectare provides a third more homes on the same land and reduces the land needed for a fixed number of homes by 25%. Applied purely as an illustration to the 37,950-home requirement, this reduces the land requirement from around 1,265 hectares to 949 hectares, a difference of more than 300 hectares. Existing permissions, windfalls and brownfield sites would reduce both figures, but the proportional saving remains the same. CE council should publish different density scenarios and show how much greenfield land each would require.
Where greenfield or Green Belt land is considered, the council must also look at gross density: how many homes are delivered for every hectare of countryside lost. In the current local plan there are several examples of areas of poor return for the loss of green belt land that has been farmed for centuries, has significant biodiversity benefits and is providing an important role in stopping the sprawl of Macclesfield.
Both gross and net density should be published for every potential allocation.
Cheshire East should undertake a feasibility study into building council housing directly. Consideration should be given to council owned or controlled land and examine whether higher-density council and social housing could be delivered through direct development or partnerships with housing providers.
I volunteer at [REDACTED] and recognise the acute shortage of council housing across the CEC area.
Green Belt should not be released until these alternatives have been properly tested and the results published.
Protect Gaps Between Settlements
The submissions around Macclesfield must be assessed together. Taken collectively, those around Greenside / Prestbury Road could create a substantial new development front along Whirley Road, Sandy Lane, Birtles Road. the A537and Prestbury Road.
The local plan shows housing on green fields (currently filled with grazing cattle and sheep) reaching the edge of Prestbury. Although this will be defined as a village, by CEC, it means that Macclesfield will be merging with Prestbury at this edge of town where there is already issues with traffic flow and lack of infrastructure.
The council’s previous Green Belt work found that parcels MF11, MF08 and MF09 made a significant contribution to checking the unrestricted sprawl of Macclesfield. If a new assessment reaches a different conclusion, the council should explain clearly what evidence has changed.
The revised grey-belt approach does not mean that all Green Belt is equally available for development. Purpose A: checking the unrestricted sprawl of large built-up areas, is particularly relevant here. Annex E of the revised NPPFspecifically identifies an extended “finger” of development into the Green Belt as an indicator that land may make a strong contribution to preventing sprawl.
The council should not divide large Green Belt parcels into convenient smaller areas that disguise their wider function or allow promoters to nibble away at long-established boundaries. Birtles Road and Whirley Road have contained the outward spread of Macclesfield towards Prestbury and Henbury and helped protect the Alderley Edge wooded landscape for many years.
Any new settlement boundary must be clear, permanent and capable of resisting further expansion over the full plan period. None of the Greenside submissions provide an obvious defensible long-term boundary as examples.
Infrastructure Before Growth
Infrastructure must be assessed cumulatively across all the CEC and specifically for my comments, the Macclesfield proposals, not calculated separately for each submission.
Investment should be agreed with location, funding and delivery in place before house building on any scale is started. Investments are required for parks & green spaces, schooling, healthcare including hospitals, services, including water and sewerage, and transport including roads.
Examples of issues are already well documented in the area due to large housing developments. For example Whirley Primary School is already full.There are families living on the Greenside estate, close to the school, who have failed to obtain a place.
Water pressure has been negatively impacted by the new housing across Macclesfield.
Traffic must also be modelled cumulatively across a period of time, not just weekends. For Macclesfield the submissions on Priory Lane, Sandy Lane and Alderley Road will add traffic to what is a country road. Since Kings school has opened the road cannot cope with buses & large cars taking children to school. There has been no investment in the road other than directly outside Kings entrances and the road is falling away at the edges in many parts due to volume & weight of the traffic. Several local approaches are narrow or single track, have poor or missing pavements and contain chokepoints where widening would be extremely difficult because of existing homes.
The same principle applies to drainage, sewerage, healthcare, public transport, electricity and safe walking and cycling routes. Promises of future contributions are not enough. The council must show that improvements are physically possible, fully funded and delivered before the additional housebuilding be approved or begin.
Transparent and Evidence-Based Decisions
The council should publish one area-wide map and assessment covering every relevant submission around Macclesfield. It should show the combined housing assumption, likely access arrangements and cumulative effects on roads, schools, drainage, Green Belt, landscape and wildlife.
For every site, the council should publish both gross and net density, showing separately the land required for ecological and landscape buffers, drainage, overhead-line easements, access, open space and other mitigation.
Assessment criteria, evidence sources, assumptions and scoring should be published in full. Claims made by promoters should not be treated as facts without supporting evidence.
The evidence base should compare sites with genuine alternatives, including brownfield regeneration, higher-density development, direct council housebuilding, council-owned land and the safeguarded land south-west of Macclesfield. It should also show how different density assumptions affect the amount of Green Belt that might be required.
Local evidence must be taken seriously. Residents have direct experience of school-place refusals, school-run congestion, unsafe walking routes, unreliable bus services and surface-water flooding. These are existing problems, not theoretical objections to future housing.
Protect Nature and Landscape
The greenfield sites identified in the local plan includes peat lands (Danes Moss), mature hedgerows, trees, ponds and open fields.
CEC should not permit building on any peatland..
There are several studies already known to CEC about the wildlife in the county. I urge CEC to carefully consider the wildlife needs in any building plans.Where existing records show a realistic risk to protected or priority species, appropriate surveys should inform site selection. They should not be left to later stages and should be a key aspect of decision making in the early drafting of the local plan.
Assessment must consider the cumulative fragmentation of habitats and the effects of lighting, traffic, noise, domestic pets and increased recreational pressure. Biodiversity net gain should not be treated as permission to destroy established habitat and attempt to recreate it elsewhere. Avoiding harm must come first.
Many of the submitted sites around Maccesfield are active agricultural land used for arable farming or grazing. The loss of productive land, its contribution to food security and its role in responding to climate change should receive proper weight in a plan covering the next 15 years. As many residents have said, “once its gone, its gone”.
Residents also have photographic evidence of regular surface-water flooding in parts of the area. Drainage, soil conditions, water quality and flood risk must be considered across site boundaries, particularly where large areas of absorbent open land could be replaced by roads, roofs and hard surfaces.
Macclesfield as a Community
Macclesfield is a mill town with good access to countryside from all parts of the town. The propsed expansion of this scale will impact the very essence of the town and its likely to become more if a commuter town for Manchester. In the local plan, much is made of Macclesfield and surrounds history and countryside status yet CEC plan seems to ignore this.
CEC needs to have a clear plan for Macclesfield as it deserves more investment than Crewe, it generates a large income for CEC on council tax yet doesnt appear to have the same proportion of investment in infrastructure with part time policing and fire services, no full time Town hall services eg Registrars. CEC should be transparent in the plans to redress this if there is a large increase in housing in this area - not everyone can take a 2hour round trip to Crewe.
CEC need to carefully consider any increased housing based on theoretical increase in jobs in the area. There is no guarantee that existing employers in the area will continue to have the same level of employment in future years. The advent of AI, government decisions on taxes eg NI & business tax, can affect investment decisions from companies quoted in the local plan. Any local plan needs to be independent of these employment assumptions.
Next Steps
As the local plan develops CEC need to give residents longer to read, digest & comment on plans. There is an assumption within CEC that everyone is on social media and aware of these plans. I know my neighbours & colleagues were completely unaware of this plan and commenting timeline, and so CEC need to do much more to publicise the next steps & engage a higher proportion of residents.
Sheila Lachut
Resident in Macclesfield [REDACTED]
Comment
Local plan scoping consultation
Development in settlements
Representation ID: 5571
Received: 31/08/2026
Respondent: Ms Sheila Lachut
The respondent argues that large-scale expansion could fundamentally alter Macclesfield’s character and increase its role as a commuter town for Manchester, while reducing its relationship with the surrounding countryside. They call for a clear strategy for Macclesfield and greater investment in infrastructure and public services, particularly if significant housing growth is planned. The respondent also questions assumptions linking future housing requirements to anticipated employment growth, noting that technological change, taxation and business investment decisions could affect future employment levels. They argue that the Local Plan should take a cautious approach to relying on projected employment growth when determining housing needs.
Local Plan Scoping Consultation Submission 31.8.2026
I would urge CEC to request a delayed implementation time frame for the new government building requirements rather than agreeing to any plans submitted in the short term. It is unfeasible to jncrease the housing ask by 30-50% yet have no time to develop a reasonable, considered plan.
Brownfield First
I would request that CEC consider brownfield before considering further Green Belt development/release, the council should carry out & publish a proper assessment of brownfield sites, vacant buildings, stalled planning permissions, town-centre regeneration opportunities and underused public land. This should include a realistic assessment of what intervention would be needed to make difficult sites deliverable.
There are several empty properties for sale across the CEC area together with many planning permissions granted yet not started. CEC should consider reneging any planning permissions where there is no firm commitment to build in the next 3years (as an example).
The council should also reconsider its existing density expectations. "Build up, not out" as the government had repeatedly said. Policy HOU 14 generally expects at least 30 homes per net hectare. In light of the revised minimum housing need of 2,530 homes a year, or 37,950 over 15 years, the new plan should test increasing this to at least 40 homes per hectare in Macclesfield and other suitable locations.
Increasing density from 30 to 40 homes per hectare provides a third more homes on the same land and reduces the land needed for a fixed number of homes by 25%. Applied purely as an illustration to the 37,950-home requirement, this reduces the land requirement from around 1,265 hectares to 949 hectares, a difference of more than 300 hectares. Existing permissions, windfalls and brownfield sites would reduce both figures, but the proportional saving remains the same. CE council should publish different density scenarios and show how much greenfield land each would require.
Where greenfield or Green Belt land is considered, the council must also look at gross density: how many homes are delivered for every hectare of countryside lost. In the current local plan there are several examples of areas of poor return for the loss of green belt land that has been farmed for centuries, has significant biodiversity benefits and is providing an important role in stopping the sprawl of Macclesfield.
Both gross and net density should be published for every potential allocation.
Cheshire East should undertake a feasibility study into building council housing directly. Consideration should be given to council owned or controlled land and examine whether higher-density council and social housing could be delivered through direct development or partnerships with housing providers.
I volunteer at [REDACTED] and recognise the acute shortage of council housing across the CEC area.
Green Belt should not be released until these alternatives have been properly tested and the results published.
Protect Gaps Between Settlements
The submissions around Macclesfield must be assessed together. Taken collectively, those around Greenside / Prestbury Road could create a substantial new development front along Whirley Road, Sandy Lane, Birtles Road. the A537and Prestbury Road.
The local plan shows housing on green fields (currently filled with grazing cattle and sheep) reaching the edge of Prestbury. Although this will be defined as a village, by CEC, it means that Macclesfield will be merging with Prestbury at this edge of town where there is already issues with traffic flow and lack of infrastructure.
The council’s previous Green Belt work found that parcels MF11, MF08 and MF09 made a significant contribution to checking the unrestricted sprawl of Macclesfield. If a new assessment reaches a different conclusion, the council should explain clearly what evidence has changed.
The revised grey-belt approach does not mean that all Green Belt is equally available for development. Purpose A: checking the unrestricted sprawl of large built-up areas, is particularly relevant here. Annex E of the revised NPPFspecifically identifies an extended “finger” of development into the Green Belt as an indicator that land may make a strong contribution to preventing sprawl.
The council should not divide large Green Belt parcels into convenient smaller areas that disguise their wider function or allow promoters to nibble away at long-established boundaries. Birtles Road and Whirley Road have contained the outward spread of Macclesfield towards Prestbury and Henbury and helped protect the Alderley Edge wooded landscape for many years.
Any new settlement boundary must be clear, permanent and capable of resisting further expansion over the full plan period. None of the Greenside submissions provide an obvious defensible long-term boundary as examples.
Infrastructure Before Growth
Infrastructure must be assessed cumulatively across all the CEC and specifically for my comments, the Macclesfield proposals, not calculated separately for each submission.
Investment should be agreed with location, funding and delivery in place before house building on any scale is started. Investments are required for parks & green spaces, schooling, healthcare including hospitals, services, including water and sewerage, and transport including roads.
Examples of issues are already well documented in the area due to large housing developments. For example Whirley Primary School is already full.There are families living on the Greenside estate, close to the school, who have failed to obtain a place.
Water pressure has been negatively impacted by the new housing across Macclesfield.
Traffic must also be modelled cumulatively across a period of time, not just weekends. For Macclesfield the submissions on Priory Lane, Sandy Lane and Alderley Road will add traffic to what is a country road. Since Kings school has opened the road cannot cope with buses & large cars taking children to school. There has been no investment in the road other than directly outside Kings entrances and the road is falling away at the edges in many parts due to volume & weight of the traffic. Several local approaches are narrow or single track, have poor or missing pavements and contain chokepoints where widening would be extremely difficult because of existing homes.
The same principle applies to drainage, sewerage, healthcare, public transport, electricity and safe walking and cycling routes. Promises of future contributions are not enough. The council must show that improvements are physically possible, fully funded and delivered before the additional housebuilding be approved or begin.
Transparent and Evidence-Based Decisions
The council should publish one area-wide map and assessment covering every relevant submission around Macclesfield. It should show the combined housing assumption, likely access arrangements and cumulative effects on roads, schools, drainage, Green Belt, landscape and wildlife.
For every site, the council should publish both gross and net density, showing separately the land required for ecological and landscape buffers, drainage, overhead-line easements, access, open space and other mitigation.
Assessment criteria, evidence sources, assumptions and scoring should be published in full. Claims made by promoters should not be treated as facts without supporting evidence.
The evidence base should compare sites with genuine alternatives, including brownfield regeneration, higher-density development, direct council housebuilding, council-owned land and the safeguarded land south-west of Macclesfield. It should also show how different density assumptions affect the amount of Green Belt that might be required.
Local evidence must be taken seriously. Residents have direct experience of school-place refusals, school-run congestion, unsafe walking routes, unreliable bus services and surface-water flooding. These are existing problems, not theoretical objections to future housing.
Protect Nature and Landscape
The greenfield sites identified in the local plan includes peat lands (Danes Moss), mature hedgerows, trees, ponds and open fields.
CEC should not permit building on any peatland..
There are several studies already known to CEC about the wildlife in the county. I urge CEC to carefully consider the wildlife needs in any building plans.Where existing records show a realistic risk to protected or priority species, appropriate surveys should inform site selection. They should not be left to later stages and should be a key aspect of decision making in the early drafting of the local plan.
Assessment must consider the cumulative fragmentation of habitats and the effects of lighting, traffic, noise, domestic pets and increased recreational pressure. Biodiversity net gain should not be treated as permission to destroy established habitat and attempt to recreate it elsewhere. Avoiding harm must come first.
Many of the submitted sites around Maccesfield are active agricultural land used for arable farming or grazing. The loss of productive land, its contribution to food security and its role in responding to climate change should receive proper weight in a plan covering the next 15 years. As many residents have said, “once its gone, its gone”.
Residents also have photographic evidence of regular surface-water flooding in parts of the area. Drainage, soil conditions, water quality and flood risk must be considered across site boundaries, particularly where large areas of absorbent open land could be replaced by roads, roofs and hard surfaces.
Macclesfield as a Community
Macclesfield is a mill town with good access to countryside from all parts of the town. The propsed expansion of this scale will impact the very essence of the town and its likely to become more if a commuter town for Manchester. In the local plan, much is made of Macclesfield and surrounds history and countryside status yet CEC plan seems to ignore this.
CEC needs to have a clear plan for Macclesfield as it deserves more investment than Crewe, it generates a large income for CEC on council tax yet doesnt appear to have the same proportion of investment in infrastructure with part time policing and fire services, no full time Town hall services eg Registrars. CEC should be transparent in the plans to redress this if there is a large increase in housing in this area - not everyone can take a 2hour round trip to Crewe.
CEC need to carefully consider any increased housing based on theoretical increase in jobs in the area. There is no guarantee that existing employers in the area will continue to have the same level of employment in future years. The advent of AI, government decisions on taxes eg NI & business tax, can affect investment decisions from companies quoted in the local plan. Any local plan needs to be independent of these employment assumptions.
Next Steps
As the local plan develops CEC need to give residents longer to read, digest & comment on plans. There is an assumption within CEC that everyone is on social media and aware of these plans. I know my neighbours & colleagues were completely unaware of this plan and commenting timeline, and so CEC need to do much more to publicise the next steps & engage a higher proportion of residents.
Sheila Lachut
Resident in Macclesfield [REDACTED]
Comment
Local plan scoping consultation
Engagement Methods
Representation ID: 5572
Received: 31/08/2026
Respondent: Ms Sheila Lachut
As the local plan develops CEC need to give residents longer to read, digest & comment on plans. There is an assumption within CEC that everyone is on social media and aware of these plans. I know my neighbours & colleagues were completely unaware of this plan and commenting timeline, and so CEC need to do much more to publicise the next steps & engage a higher proportion of residents.
Local Plan Scoping Consultation Submission 31.8.2026
I would urge CEC to request a delayed implementation time frame for the new government building requirements rather than agreeing to any plans submitted in the short term. It is unfeasible to jncrease the housing ask by 30-50% yet have no time to develop a reasonable, considered plan.
Brownfield First
I would request that CEC consider brownfield before considering further Green Belt development/release, the council should carry out & publish a proper assessment of brownfield sites, vacant buildings, stalled planning permissions, town-centre regeneration opportunities and underused public land. This should include a realistic assessment of what intervention would be needed to make difficult sites deliverable.
There are several empty properties for sale across the CEC area together with many planning permissions granted yet not started. CEC should consider reneging any planning permissions where there is no firm commitment to build in the next 3years (as an example).
The council should also reconsider its existing density expectations. "Build up, not out" as the government had repeatedly said. Policy HOU 14 generally expects at least 30 homes per net hectare. In light of the revised minimum housing need of 2,530 homes a year, or 37,950 over 15 years, the new plan should test increasing this to at least 40 homes per hectare in Macclesfield and other suitable locations.
Increasing density from 30 to 40 homes per hectare provides a third more homes on the same land and reduces the land needed for a fixed number of homes by 25%. Applied purely as an illustration to the 37,950-home requirement, this reduces the land requirement from around 1,265 hectares to 949 hectares, a difference of more than 300 hectares. Existing permissions, windfalls and brownfield sites would reduce both figures, but the proportional saving remains the same. CE council should publish different density scenarios and show how much greenfield land each would require.
Where greenfield or Green Belt land is considered, the council must also look at gross density: how many homes are delivered for every hectare of countryside lost. In the current local plan there are several examples of areas of poor return for the loss of green belt land that has been farmed for centuries, has significant biodiversity benefits and is providing an important role in stopping the sprawl of Macclesfield.
Both gross and net density should be published for every potential allocation.
Cheshire East should undertake a feasibility study into building council housing directly. Consideration should be given to council owned or controlled land and examine whether higher-density council and social housing could be delivered through direct development or partnerships with housing providers.
I volunteer at [REDACTED] and recognise the acute shortage of council housing across the CEC area.
Green Belt should not be released until these alternatives have been properly tested and the results published.
Protect Gaps Between Settlements
The submissions around Macclesfield must be assessed together. Taken collectively, those around Greenside / Prestbury Road could create a substantial new development front along Whirley Road, Sandy Lane, Birtles Road. the A537and Prestbury Road.
The local plan shows housing on green fields (currently filled with grazing cattle and sheep) reaching the edge of Prestbury. Although this will be defined as a village, by CEC, it means that Macclesfield will be merging with Prestbury at this edge of town where there is already issues with traffic flow and lack of infrastructure.
The council’s previous Green Belt work found that parcels MF11, MF08 and MF09 made a significant contribution to checking the unrestricted sprawl of Macclesfield. If a new assessment reaches a different conclusion, the council should explain clearly what evidence has changed.
The revised grey-belt approach does not mean that all Green Belt is equally available for development. Purpose A: checking the unrestricted sprawl of large built-up areas, is particularly relevant here. Annex E of the revised NPPFspecifically identifies an extended “finger” of development into the Green Belt as an indicator that land may make a strong contribution to preventing sprawl.
The council should not divide large Green Belt parcels into convenient smaller areas that disguise their wider function or allow promoters to nibble away at long-established boundaries. Birtles Road and Whirley Road have contained the outward spread of Macclesfield towards Prestbury and Henbury and helped protect the Alderley Edge wooded landscape for many years.
Any new settlement boundary must be clear, permanent and capable of resisting further expansion over the full plan period. None of the Greenside submissions provide an obvious defensible long-term boundary as examples.
Infrastructure Before Growth
Infrastructure must be assessed cumulatively across all the CEC and specifically for my comments, the Macclesfield proposals, not calculated separately for each submission.
Investment should be agreed with location, funding and delivery in place before house building on any scale is started. Investments are required for parks & green spaces, schooling, healthcare including hospitals, services, including water and sewerage, and transport including roads.
Examples of issues are already well documented in the area due to large housing developments. For example Whirley Primary School is already full.There are families living on the Greenside estate, close to the school, who have failed to obtain a place.
Water pressure has been negatively impacted by the new housing across Macclesfield.
Traffic must also be modelled cumulatively across a period of time, not just weekends. For Macclesfield the submissions on Priory Lane, Sandy Lane and Alderley Road will add traffic to what is a country road. Since Kings school has opened the road cannot cope with buses & large cars taking children to school. There has been no investment in the road other than directly outside Kings entrances and the road is falling away at the edges in many parts due to volume & weight of the traffic. Several local approaches are narrow or single track, have poor or missing pavements and contain chokepoints where widening would be extremely difficult because of existing homes.
The same principle applies to drainage, sewerage, healthcare, public transport, electricity and safe walking and cycling routes. Promises of future contributions are not enough. The council must show that improvements are physically possible, fully funded and delivered before the additional housebuilding be approved or begin.
Transparent and Evidence-Based Decisions
The council should publish one area-wide map and assessment covering every relevant submission around Macclesfield. It should show the combined housing assumption, likely access arrangements and cumulative effects on roads, schools, drainage, Green Belt, landscape and wildlife.
For every site, the council should publish both gross and net density, showing separately the land required for ecological and landscape buffers, drainage, overhead-line easements, access, open space and other mitigation.
Assessment criteria, evidence sources, assumptions and scoring should be published in full. Claims made by promoters should not be treated as facts without supporting evidence.
The evidence base should compare sites with genuine alternatives, including brownfield regeneration, higher-density development, direct council housebuilding, council-owned land and the safeguarded land south-west of Macclesfield. It should also show how different density assumptions affect the amount of Green Belt that might be required.
Local evidence must be taken seriously. Residents have direct experience of school-place refusals, school-run congestion, unsafe walking routes, unreliable bus services and surface-water flooding. These are existing problems, not theoretical objections to future housing.
Protect Nature and Landscape
The greenfield sites identified in the local plan includes peat lands (Danes Moss), mature hedgerows, trees, ponds and open fields.
CEC should not permit building on any peatland..
There are several studies already known to CEC about the wildlife in the county. I urge CEC to carefully consider the wildlife needs in any building plans.Where existing records show a realistic risk to protected or priority species, appropriate surveys should inform site selection. They should not be left to later stages and should be a key aspect of decision making in the early drafting of the local plan.
Assessment must consider the cumulative fragmentation of habitats and the effects of lighting, traffic, noise, domestic pets and increased recreational pressure. Biodiversity net gain should not be treated as permission to destroy established habitat and attempt to recreate it elsewhere. Avoiding harm must come first.
Many of the submitted sites around Maccesfield are active agricultural land used for arable farming or grazing. The loss of productive land, its contribution to food security and its role in responding to climate change should receive proper weight in a plan covering the next 15 years. As many residents have said, “once its gone, its gone”.
Residents also have photographic evidence of regular surface-water flooding in parts of the area. Drainage, soil conditions, water quality and flood risk must be considered across site boundaries, particularly where large areas of absorbent open land could be replaced by roads, roofs and hard surfaces.
Macclesfield as a Community
Macclesfield is a mill town with good access to countryside from all parts of the town. The propsed expansion of this scale will impact the very essence of the town and its likely to become more if a commuter town for Manchester. In the local plan, much is made of Macclesfield and surrounds history and countryside status yet CEC plan seems to ignore this.
CEC needs to have a clear plan for Macclesfield as it deserves more investment than Crewe, it generates a large income for CEC on council tax yet doesnt appear to have the same proportion of investment in infrastructure with part time policing and fire services, no full time Town hall services eg Registrars. CEC should be transparent in the plans to redress this if there is a large increase in housing in this area - not everyone can take a 2hour round trip to Crewe.
CEC need to carefully consider any increased housing based on theoretical increase in jobs in the area. There is no guarantee that existing employers in the area will continue to have the same level of employment in future years. The advent of AI, government decisions on taxes eg NI & business tax, can affect investment decisions from companies quoted in the local plan. Any local plan needs to be independent of these employment assumptions.
Next Steps
As the local plan develops CEC need to give residents longer to read, digest & comment on plans. There is an assumption within CEC that everyone is on social media and aware of these plans. I know my neighbours & colleagues were completely unaware of this plan and commenting timeline, and so CEC need to do much more to publicise the next steps & engage a higher proportion of residents.
Sheila Lachut
Resident in Macclesfield [REDACTED]
