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WHINNEY CARR SAVED FROM DEVELOPMENT
21/3/03: Green Councillors and community groups were celebrating this week as the Secretary of State announced that he was finally refusing planning permision for a new 535-home development on green fields at Whinney Carr Farm, between Scotforth and Lancaster University. The Green Party had been actively opposing the development since it was proposed by the then Labour-controlled Council in 1997. Lancaster City Council voted to grant the development planning permission in November 2000 with MBI and Conservative Councillors joining Labour to back the development. However the Secretary of State decided to hold a public inquiry after Green Councillor Emily Heath informed him that the development would have major impacts on traffic congestion and the countryside and would take the focus away from regeneration of deprived areas. The initial inquiry into the Planning Application, held in January and February 2002, recommended that the development should be allowed. However this decision was based on housing provision figures which, the Green Party argued, were out of date. The Secretary of State accepted this point and decided to re-open the inquiry to consider more up-to-date information on the need for new housing in Lancaster District. The re-opened inquiry was held in November 2002. "I am delighted with this decision after a five and a half year campaign and three public inquiries," commented Green County Councillor Jonathan Sear. "As individual objectors with no money to spend it was often difficult to match the legal arguments of the City Council and Developer's highly paid barristers and expert witnesses, but we always believed we were right and it is wonderful to hear that after considering all the evidence, the inspector agrees with us. I would like to thank the County Council for agreeing to present evidence that supported our case at the re-opened inquiry." The development would have added around 4000 extra car journeys to Ashton Road and Scotford Road every day. "This is a huge victory for our Stop the Sprawl campaign," said Green Councillor Emily Heath. "We want to reduce traffic in Scotforth, but a housing development this far from the City Centre's ammenities would have substantially increased it. This decision is great news for everyone who is concerned about traffic levels in the area - espicially for those residents who put so much effort into the campaign. I would particularly like to thank the Chair of Scotforth Parish Council, Terry Sloan, the Chair of South Lancaster Residents Association, Mike Hardy, and Anne Chapman from Friends of the Earth for giving days of their time to help us make the case against this development." However this is unlikely to be the last word on greenfield development south of Lancaster. "We are concerned that other house-builders are eyeing up land on the opposite side of the A6," revealed Green campaigner Catriona Stamp, "and we don't know how long it will be before the developers try again at Whinney Carr. However the decision clearly states that the new housing is not needed, so we will have very strong arguments if we have to use them again." Whinney Carr An analysis by North Lancashire Friends of the Earth The public inquiry into 500 odd houses at Whinney Carr
Farm, south of Lancaster, took place in January 2002. The council want to give planning permission because if these houses are not built they think the number of houses built in the district between 1991 and 2006 will be 660 dwellings short of the ‘requirement’ for 7936 houses, worked out through the structure plan and local plan processes. The development will also provide land for a primary school and money to build a new road from Ashton Road to the A6, providing an alternative route to the narrow and pavementless section of Ashford Road (the road west from the traffic lights at Booths). The applicant (the farmer) has brought in a developer who has done a lot of work, on the masterplan for the development, traffic impacts, etc. However, our argument is a simple one that points up the irrelevancy of these details – that there is no need for this housing. In fact I conclude by saying that granting permission for housing at Whinney Carr would be positively detrimental. This is because the problem in Lancashire, and the north west generally, is not that insufficient houses are being built to meet demand, but that too many houses are being built. This is creating areas of low demand, where house prices have collapsed, terminal decline has set in and areas progressively abandoned. This phenomenon is most prevalent in parts of Manchester, Liverpool, and East Lancashire, but there is a risk of it spreading to Lancaster District – areas such as the West End of Morecambe and Skerton are vulnerable. One of our arguments is that, in Lancashire as a whole, more houses have already been built or given planning permission than the Lancashire Structure plan considers are required. This requirement is almost certainly an overestimate as it was derived from ‘1992-based’ projections for the growth in household numbers in the UK. The more up to date, 1996-based projections, consider that the number of households in the North West will grow by 30% less. The challenge in Lancashire is to reduce the rate at which houses are built. Whinney Carr should be at the bottom of the list of sites for housing development as it is a greenfield site, on the edge of town, where building houses will do nothing to assist urban regeneration, so permission to build houses here should certainly be refused. If you would like a copy of our evidence, I will be happy to supply you with one. Anne Chapman
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