The leader of Stockport council has claimed the borough will not have to build ‘on an inch of green belt’ as it set a new deadline for consulting on its long-term masterplan. Coun Mark Hunter believes the government will soon cut Stockport’s house building target - which currently stands at more than 1,100 new homes per year - by around 25pc.
This, he told a recent full council meeting, would leave the ambition of leaving green belt sites completely untouched ‘eminently doable’. Stockport is the only borough in Greater Manchester not signed up to the joint ‘Places for Everyone’ strategy - meaning it has to address its housing and employment needs via a Local Plan.
This blueprint will need to be approved by the government and adopted by the end of 2023. Public consultation on the plan has twice been delayed - most recently in September - with the Liberal Democrats administration citing ‘turbulence’ at national government level and the pressures residents and businesses are facing due to the ‘cost of living crisis’.
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The Lib Dems also said they were not prepared to spend £200,000 on the exercise when it could be ‘rendered void by any changes to planning policy’.However, town hall bosses have now committed to a new deadline of no later than January 28 next year to get the eight week consultation under way.
An amended motion agreed at Thursday's full council meeting said this would ‘provide time for any planning rule changes announced by the government before that date to be included’. The original motion, moved by Labour’s Coun David Meller, said this would send a positive message to the government’ that the council was ‘serious about our borough’s future’ and ‘keen to capitalise on the work that has and is already taking place’.
Coun Meller, shadow cabinet member for economy and regeneration, told the meeting that the Local Plan was ‘key to delivering a cleaner, more equal and more prosperous Stockport - and it was time to consult ‘without delay’. “We can’t use supposed uncertainty to put an indefinite break on proceeding with this consultation,” he said.
“The local plan has been beset with uncertainty through the transition from Brexit, Covid and now, obviously, the Cost of Living Crisis. But all this never got in the way of its work.”
He added: “It was only within a week of a new Prime Minister coming to office that things apparently became too uncertain - for me personally, that doesn’t wash."
Coun Meller also insisted that the £200k price tage was ‘not an unnecessary expense but an investment in the borough’s long-term future, creating more economic opportunity, becoming carbon neutral and have the clean homes and infrastructure we need’.
The Lib Dems were receptive to the motion, but tabled an amendment claiming the council ‘could deliver at least 75pc of our Local Housing Need without any green belt development’. It also spelled out the 'rationale' for the September postponement.
However, the Conservatives - who in December 2020 voted with the Lib Dems to pull Stockport out of the joint Greater Manchester plan - questioned whether that meant 25pc of development would occur on green belt sites.
Coun Hunter suggested this was a willful misinterpretation by the Tories’ Coun Oliver Johnstone. “I think he perfectly well understands that our reference to 75pc in our amendment implies that we can achieve 75pc of the government’s target without having to build on an inch of green belt,” said the council leader.
"Let me try to make it perfectly clear,” he added. “We are saying and setting our stall out that we want to protect green belt with the local plan."
Coun Hunter said the consultation had been ready to go, but over the summer ’a whole variety of statements coming out - not from backbenchers but senior government ministers about differing views on housing targets'.
And he said Lib Dem chiefs were genuinely taken aback when told it would cost £200,000 to run the consultation. “The more we thought about it, the more we thought ‘how can we justify going ahead with that, at a time of such great financial uncertainty, when the government is busy changing the goalposts.”
“I believe that the government is going to change its mind,” he said, citing comments made by Prime Minister Liz Truss last week which he believed ‘vindicated’ the Lib Dem position.
“We would go for around 75pc of the target the government previously identified. And we believe that is eminently doable - on the basis of our officers advice - without building on a inch of green belt.”
The Conservatives are also keen to consult as soon as possible - but questioned the need to postpone the consutlation at all, and Coun Hunter’s claim that the government would soon slash the council’s annual house building target.
“What our communities think is important," said Coun Mike Hurleston, leader of the Tory group. "I’m not sure how our communities are strengthened and protected by not protecting them and kicking the can down the road.
“The amendment states that it could deliver at least 75pc of the local housing need without any green belt development. No evidence has underpinned this assertion.” The motion, as amended by the Lib Dems, was carried.
Stockport full council met at the town hall on Thursday night (October 6).
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