This morning, at 10am, the Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee’s discussion on NEW TOWNS was broadcast on the BBC Parliament Channel. The circumstances surrounding the inclusion of the Adlington Proposal were clearly and unequivocally laid bare.
The newly appointed Chair of the New Towns Task Force, Sir Michael Lyons, confirmed that the Leader and Deputy Leader of the Cheshire East Council gave their full support to the inclusion of Adlington stating:
“We explicitly asked in every case if the relevant LA, were they content to be listed amongst those areas which we were recommending to Government. In that case Adlington responded by letter signed by the Leader and Deputy Leader saying they were.
I think we felt that was safe enough at this stage for us to put forward the proposition to government for consideration”
When questioned about the lessons learned from Adlington about the next round of consultation, Matthew Pennycook (Minister for Housing and Planning: MHCLG) was brutally clear;
“We will make decisions on these locations in the national interest, we are not going to make decisions on these locations based on the number of signatures on a petition in opposition”.
KEY POINTS
This explicitly demonstrates that the Leader and Deputy leader of Cheshire East Council were wholly complicit in offering Adlington as a potential New Town site.
In so doing, they exercised executive powers to which they are not entitled under the Committee System and which is in direct contradiction to the Cheshire East Constitution.
Their signing of that letter last year has clearly carried significant weight with the Task Force, within Government and it continues to do so.
So too, the question must be asked if, as the Minister so eloquently stated, this Government is not interested in the views of residents expressed in petitions (the only mechanism available for residents to express their concerns following the exercise of a Non-Disclosure Agreement to protect site owners),
Why did Labour’s Macclesfield MP Tim Rocca, set one up?
At the very least, this was a cruel mechanism by which to offer hope to constituents across a major part of the Macclesfield Constituency and wider Cheshire.
Hear the full programme via the link below ⬇️
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m002pzxr
