Bury Local Plan Consultation Final Chance

The Consultation by Bury Council on the proposed local plan closes at 5pm today so what better opportunity on a Bank Holiday than to make your views known.

You can read about what is proposed and how to submit your views here:

http://www.bury.gov.uk/index.aspx?articleid=10735

The submission I have made is follows:

This submission is made in response to the ‘Notice of Intention to prepare the Bury Local Plan and invitation to make representations on what the Local Plan should contain’ issued pursuant to Section 18 of the Town and Country Planning (Local Planning)(England) Regulations 2012.

1. It is clear from the said Notice and in particular the following statement:

Given that the GMSF will form an integral part of Bury’s development plan, it is important to note that the approach set out in the GMSF will need to be reflected in the Bury Local Plan. In particular, the Local Plan will incorporate and reflect the levels of growth, the strategic policy approach, strategic site allocations and any revisions to the Green Belt that may evolve through the GMSF.

that the scope for any local determination of planning policy will be severely constrained by the decisions taken by the Greater Manchester Combined Authority (GMCA) and /or the Elected Mayor of Greater Manchester.

Consequently, I wish to place on record that I oppose the present proposed Greater Manchester Spatial Framework as set out in my submission to the consultation on that document.

1. I believe Bury should make it clear they do not accept the premises on which the GMSF is based. The timeframe is unnecessarily long. The projected size of households is too low based on both historical records and the official projections of household size. The use of both a shorter timeframe, a more realistic projection of the size of households combined with greater housing density on existing brownfield land and future brownfields sites which can reasonably be expected to arise during the timeframe of the plan would remove the requirement for development on the existing green belt land.
2. I believe Bury should make it clear to the GMCA that they will not approve any plan which involves the erosion of Bury’s existing protected green belt land. This position could be completely defended by the use of the official projections for population growth and household size.
3. Subject to the above I believe that the Local Plan should require all the infrastructure to be in place before any new development is permitted. This must include roads, drainage and telecommunications (including the provision of superfast broadband). In the case of residential development it must be demonstrated that there is sufficient capacity in public services in particular GP’s and schools both primary and secondary to cope with increased demand.
4. Given the recent problems with flooding throughout the Borough specific and additional consideration must be given to the risk of flooding not only to the proposed new properties but to the existing properties who may be adversely affected.