Green Belt Under Threat  -  AGAIN !!!!

Save our Green Belt – Help Required … Again!!

Through the work of ITPAS, as part of Wirral Green Space Alliance (WGSA), being successful at the Leverhulme Estates’ Planning Inquiry followed by the Local Plan Examination, we were close to getting the Regeneration-led Local Plan adopted with its Green Belt protection.  

But this is now in jeopardy through the Government’s proposed Housing & Planning Reforms.

We have prepared a 2-page synopsis of what Proposals mean for Wirral, outlining the issues and our concerns. A copy of this full statement is available here containing a downloadable version.

Here is a link to the Government’s Consultation document.

Also here is a series of slides giving a useful illustrated and punchy insight into the main issues and concerns, which has been produced by the Community Planning Alliance 

from their research and thousands of responses to their Survey. 

  https://drive.google.com/file/d/1N8QZDNBzEE4YWQSw0KoXHwBf8PoeVW4V/view

CLICK HERE FOR ADVICE AND SAMPLE TEXT ON MAKING RESPONSES 

TO THE CONSULTATION DOCUMENT

Click Here for Full response to Government Online106 Questions Consultative Document

Deadline for Response: 24th September, 11.45PM

Responses can be through the Online system or by Post: (Planning Policy Consultation Team, Planning Directorate – Policy Division, Ministry of Housing, Communities & Local Government, Floor 3, Fry Building, 2 Marsham Street, London, SW1P 4DF) 

or better still by a short Email to:  PlanningPolicyConsultation@communities.gov.uk 

WGSA and ITPAS have addressed the highly technical 106-Question Survey, see link above, but once again we are calling on your support, where your individual words, based on the themes we have set out, 

should carry great weight and hopefully improve the Reforms.

Please help us - make your points – make a difference !

If we get the current Local Plan ‘adopted’ in the next few months on the present basis (as we are in the ‘fortunate’ position of being in the final ‘Examination’ stage), our hard-pressed Council would have to commence a Plan Review on the basis of the new mandated regime, involving not the now-accepted figure of 4,500 new homes within the 16-year Plan Period, not even the inflated figure of 14,000 new homes in our Brownfield-only emerging Local Plan, but over 28,000 additional homes to cater for 60,000+ new Residents, increasing Wirral’s Population by 20+%, with no clarity from where such numbers would come or be employed, recalling that between 2011 and 2021 Wirral’s Population increased by just 417 people!!

Change?  Yes but … Change for the Better, please!

During the Election campaign Labour promised to introduce “a better system, that builds homes local people can afford, delivers new infrastructure and improves green spaces.”   

They also promised to redefine parts of the Green Belt as ‘Grey Belt’, which would include “lower quality” land such as petrol stations and carparks. It appears that ‘Grey-Belt’ could include previously undeveloped Green Belt next to a Settlement or Road, or any land which a Developer argues is ‘weakly performing’ Green Belt, a term undefined in Legislation or Planning Guidance but used by developers and their advisers.

ITPAS is calling on the 4 Wirral MPs to back and promote Wirral’s Brownfield-only, Regeneration-led emerging Local Plan and to oppose the Government’s mandated Proposals to apply a developer-inspired, ill-thought-out, ‘one-size-(doesn’t)-fit-all’ strategy to the whole Country, which excludes Local Participation. This is inappropriate and destructive for Wirral and overloads already hard-pressed Public Services.

Please send a copy of your Response(s) to planning@itpas.org your Local Councillors and the 4 Wirral MPs.

Here is a FULL list of all the Wirral MPs and councillors email addresses. Copy and paste into your send to email