Bury Council’s Liberal Democrat Group has submitted its formal response, and objection, in the consultation on the Greater Manchester Spatial Framework. More details of the response below.

Councillors in Bury will also have a chance to debate Bury leaving the GMSF at the Full Council meeting on 1 February 2017 with a motion proposed by the Liberal Democrat group (see Council agenda here).

The full response is below, with the key points being:

– We do not want to see any building on green belt land, certainly not before brownfield sites and existing planning permissions have been used first and empty houses have been brought back into use.

– We object specifically to the use of large sections of green belt land for thousands of houses.

– We believe that the share of green belt to be lost in Bury is unfair and inappropriate (20% lost in Bury compared to 8% across Greater Manchester. 48/49% of green belt lost in Prestwich and Whitefield/Unsworth).

– We do not believe that our Motorway network has the capacity to cope with significant new housing and specifically could not cope with the proposed massive ‘Northern Gateway’ employment site on the M62 next to Whitefield.

– We do not believe that our Highways Network has the capacity to cope with so many new homes in Bury – specifically the A56 is already full, and about to be made single land through Prestwich.

– We do not believe that the Metrolink system currently has the capacity for so many new homes in Bury – it is already full to capacity at many times in the day.

– We are concerned that we already have to live in an area with high air pollution from the M60, and the plans will make this worse.

– As Holyrood Ward councillors we wanted to specifically to object to the proposals in the Northern Gateway to build 3,200 new houses around Simister and Bowlee. The plans would destroy the special character, and community of both villages, the site is poorly located for transport links and public transport and the green ‘break’ between Prestwich/Middleton/Whitefield and Heywood would be completely lost.

– Similarly we do not believe the Heywood Road, or the Mount Road/Sandgate Road/Polefield Road areas have the capacity to deal with any major new developments either in Simister or across the Sandgate Road bridge over the motorway.

– We do believe in further investment in public transport, particularly further extension of the Metrolink network, but would oppose the wholesale building of new motorways.

Read our full submission here, which includes 37 pages of comments received from members of the public.