Respondent name
Ian Ferrer Turner
Responses
Respondent Type
Resident
Policy Name/Part of plan
Whole Plan
Legally Compliant
Yes
Sound
No
Compliant with the Duty to Co-operate
Yes
Why you consider the Draft Local Plan is not legally compliant or is unsound or fails to comply with the duty to co-operate

The plan by increasing the building of new homes and employment areas to the South of the town increases the areas reliance on road transport. The areas already congested road network will be further strained adding to the often gridlocked town and increasing air pollution. No specific plans are included in the plan to improve the current bottlenecks around the motorway junction nor the Manchester Ship Canal crossing points.

The green belt of the town is being exploited to provide developers with easy options to build. The houses built in these green belt areas will not be occupied by people who work locally as they are largely unaffordable to the proposed logistic sites and their resultant workers. This will also lead to additional road traffic as people who will work in proposed logistics sites will travel in from outside the immediate area and the local Residents will commute to work outside of the Warrington area.

The focus should be placed on developing existing brown field sites and within the town centre. That way the towns readily accessible rail links can be utilised not adding to the traffic congestion plus trigger the badly needed regeneration of the town centre.

The environmental and ecological impact of the loss of the green belt has not been properly assessed within the plan. Increasing the road traffic will increase air pollution and the removal of the green fields will reduce the ability to absorb co2 thereby increasing the harmful emissions being emitted into the atmosphere. The green belt also has the ability to absorb water, the removal of such an ability by building will only increase the potential to flooding in an area where flooding has already become more and more prevalent over recent years. The plan will be counter to the UKs plans for reducing CO2 emissions and the impact we are witnessing of global warming.

The green belt currently used to grow food will mean that as a country we will become more reliant on imported food stuffs, again increasing air pollution and emissions into the atmosphere.

The plan will threaten the integrity and identity of the local villages, green belt acts as a boundary and the removal of which will create a single homogenous area with blurred distinctions removing thousands of years of history.