Campaigners want council to change housing allocation for Turners site

The Turners site - Save Spodden Valley campaign

The Chairman of the TBA Working Party, William Hobhouse, has asked the Council to change the housing allocation for the Turners site following the planning refusal.

The Council’s Draft Heywood Green Infrastructure Plan from July 2010 says that Turners can take between 500 and 900 houses. Another document states 568 houses. The Council’s reasons for the refusal of planning permission for 650 houses gives another story:

The application site is known to be significantly contaminated with asbestos waste from previous industrial uses of this land. There is public access across part of the site and other areas of the site are inadequately secured. The site is therefore believed to pose a significant public health risk. From the information submitted, the applicant has failed to demonstrate whether the whole site can be safely and adequately remediated to support its safe re-development and future occupation.

Mr Hobhouse says that the Council is now holding two conflicting positions. One that the site is believed to pose a significant public health risk and the site owner has failed to demonstrate that it is safe to build houses there; the other that their housing plans are for hundreds of houses to be built on the site.

He said: “The Council needs to amend its planning documents. Once the site is properly tested for asbestos, it may turn out that not a single house can be built safely on large areas of the site. The starting point for housing at Turners is zero, and the case for each new house on the site needs to be demonstrated to be safe. This approach is consistent with the planning refusal and the work over many years of the TBA Working Party and experts advising the Council from the multi-agency group.”

Jason Addy, co-ordinator of the Save Spodden Valley campaign told Rochdale Online: "This is a disturbing document especially given its source.

"We have to trust Mr Rowlinson as he has always answered our questions in a balanced and professional manner.

"However, at best this map suggests there is a profound lack of communication within some departments of Rochdale Council.

"I am very surprised that the outside consultants who jointly drafted this map didn't make a declaration of interest given they previously produced environmental reports about the Turners site for MMC's planning application."

Peter Rowlinson, Head of Planning and Regulation at Rochdale Borough Council said: "The formal allocation of sites for development is the subject of government required statutory processes which involve extensive public consultation and inevitably take some time.

"The council’s current approved plan is the Unitary Development Plan approved in 2006 but actually prepared in 2004. This is in the process of being replaced by the Local Development Framework Core Strategy which completed its last public consultation stage just before Christmas. After an earlier stage of consultation specific reference to the TBA site was deleted from the plan but the site remains on a list of possible sites.”

"The Core Strategy will be the subject of a public examination probably in June by an independent Inspector and we anticipate it being adopted during the autumn.

"The site has no formal designation within this plan and whilst it could be brought forward as a proposal for development by a developer it would have to meet stringent tests to determine if the site can safely be developed. The reassurances sought by Mr Hobhouse would be secured at that stage, rather than by the current Core Strategy."

The draft document published by Rochdale Council with the map (on page 31) indicating a potential 500-900 homes in Spodden Valley can be viewed here:

http://www.rochdale.gov.uk/PDF/2010-07-31_Draft_Heywood_Green_Infrastructure_Plan.pdf