Residents urged to ‘take action’ in green belt fight

Residents have been urged to take up the fight against plans to build hundreds of new homes on green belt land at a packed public meeting.

Under the latest version of the region’s development blueprint 450 homes will be built in Bamford and Norden – down from 750 in an earlier draft – with a promise that sports pitches will be spared.

But campaigners say this does not go far enough, and more than 200 people squeezed into Bamford Chapel on Monday (25 January) for a meeting called by the Save Bamford Green Belt group.

Huge concerns remain over how roads, schools and doctors’ surgeries will cope with an influx of new residents to the area should the development go ahead.

Opponents of the plan say Bamford has already been subject to a ‘land grab’ over the previous two decades, and the new proposals would see the village lose its last piece of green space.

Sean Clowes, chairman of Save Bamford Green Belt group, called on residents to respond to the current Greater Manchester Spatial Framework with their objections, and get involved in protests to get the message across.

He also made an appeal for those with legal, planning or research experience to consider joining the committee.

He told residents: “We want you to take action because if you don’t we’ll lose, so please take one or two things away, get involved, get those submissions in and follow us on Facebook.”

 

 

Ideas for campaigning were mooted by committee members and residents.

A protest march against the original proposals attracted around 600 demonstrators and significant media interest – and Mr Clowes urged villagers to dust off their banners for a repeat event on March 2.

And a villager who told the meeting she had previously worked for the Highways Agency, suggested another tactic for opposition.

She said: “25 years ago they proposed a northern M62 relief road. What happened there was the action group generated a postcard for people to fill in. 12,000 postcards came to Highways Agency, because they were distributed by a leaflet company through a free newspaper.

“Can you imagine the problems that causes in terms of putting them on a data base? That scheme never went ahead.”

Another resident suggested an event to show planners ‘what happens when you put 900 cars on Norden Road’ – a route that is already heavily congested at peak times.

Mr Clowes said it was a ‘really good idea’ that had been considered last time but dropped on the grounds it could be too disruptive for residents. But he added: “It’s something to consider, maybe we’ll put it back on the table.”

A further objector said residents could use the law to oppose the plans.

“To what degree do we have a fighting legal structure that says, ‘you need to fulfil these precepts first before you can go ahead with that’?” he added.

Opponents also reject the council’s claim that there are not enough brownfield sites to provide jobs and homes over the next 20 years, and residents were invited to send in any suggestions of previously developed sites overlooked in the spatial framework.

David Mills, of Moore Edge Farm, owns part of the land earmarked for the homes under the spatial framework, while development giant Peel Holdings is also a major landowner.

Mr Mills told the meeting: “We live up Jowkin Lane, a large part of this proposed thing belongs to us. We’ve owned it, it’s been in our family for 100 years, and the first we knew about this was when it was in the papers about two and a half years ago,”.

He added that Peel had approached him over the land but been ‘sent away with a flea in their ear’.

He added: “We have not asked for it. We are not promoting it in any way, we don’t want it. We feel the need to clarify that, because we know there are rumours going round.”

And he also spoke of his fears that Rochdale Council could use a compulsory purchase order (CPO) to force him to sell the land.

Mr Mills said: “The last public meeting said there were no CPOs in the spatial framework. But our understanding is, going forward, certainly, the powers would exist.

“It’s not as simple as us saying we don’t want it – we could potentially be backed into a corner, not just me, but other people as well.”

Susan Cape, who lives across from the farm, told the meeting she was also worried about the possibility of a CPO and found the situation ‘quite upsetting’

She added: “I just would like everybody to think about the open spaces and how a way with everybody walking dogs and says hello to my goats, and my chickens and my turkeys and comes and feeds them and everything else. I would just ask you all to support us all in making sure that we keep it.”

Speaking after the meeting, Bamford Councillor Pat Sullivan criticised planners for identifying land for development without speaking to owners, whom she described as ‘feeling really threatened’.

She said: “It’s been really badly handled. You draw a line across people’s land and don’t approach them to say what they have done.

“It’s appalling that people are treated like that when they are working and earning a living. I can’t reassure them because I don’t know what they are planning to do.”

Council bosses stress that the version of the GMSF currently out to consultation remains a draft plan, and could still change.

Mark Robinson, assistant director of economy at Rochdale Borough Council, said: “This is a draft plan which is currently out to public consultation. We would encourage anyone who has comments on the plan to feed their views into the plan for homes, jobs and the environment (the Greater Manchester Spatial Framework) online.”

Nick Statham, Local Democracy Reporter