The next draft of the Greater Manchester Spatial Framework (GMSF) has been delayed again by the ten Labour Council Leaders in Greater Manchester.

The second draft was originally meant to be published in June 2018, but was recently delayed to July – now we’re not expecting to see anything until much later in the year.

The previous plan had been to provide for an extra 227,000 new houses across Greater Manchester (the equivalent of another Bolton and Bury added together) in the next 20 years. New population growth figures released by Government show a lower rate of predicted population growth for Greater Manchester, and there are more figures expected in September.

Previous plans would have seen whole swathes of Green Belt Lane across Bury destroyed by housing and industrial land.

The first draft of the GMSF would have seen 20% of Bury’s greenbelt land lost, almost 50% in Prestwich and Whitefield. We’re demanding that this should now by 0%. 

Bury Council is refusing to commit that the Green Belt is now safe saying: “Although no guarantees can be given is likely that less Green Belt land will have be released in Bury to meet housing needs than originally envisioned”. At the Greater Manchester Mayoral election in May 2017 Labour promised “no net loss of Green Belt land”, a promise they still seem to be breaking.

Our view as Liberal Democrats is that we DO need more housing. In particular we need more housing the people need and can afford, which is not necessarily the same as what developers want to built to make the most profit.

We want to see 100% of this building outside of Greenbelt land, using the extensive brownfield sites that exist across Greater Manchester.