I recognise the need for new housing in Warrington and thank those responsible for adjusting the 2019 local plan which was very short sighted in my view.
This new plan however is clearly not sound as there is still a significant amount of Green Belt being destroyed which laughs in the face of climate change (I write this just after Boris' press conference at the end of COP26). There is simply no need for this in my view as there are plenty of Brown Field sites in Warrington which are wasted and falling into disrepair. In addition, in a post Covid world, we are going to see the massive change in our city centre make up accelerate with more business premises closing. I don't understand why Warrington BC can't make better use of these sites to build much needed affordable housing.
Regarding location of the proposed South East urban extension, the plan is not sound as it will destroy the landscape of our local area. I moved to Appleton to live in a village, not a new town! Whilst i understand the need for some house building, i believe this should be spread evenly across all corners of the borough with Green Belt only being released as a very last resort but when this is necessary, it should be released in very small quantities in every area of our borough, not be focused on one huge area. This way, planners are more likely to utilise new Brown Field sites as they become available and where Green Belt is needed to be used as a last resort, the movement of the boundary will be very small. The 2021 local plan significantly moves the Green Belt boundary in South East Warrington by some miles and for this reason, no-one could argue this plan was sound.
Finally, adding huge numbers of new houses into an area which already suffers from traffic congestion and poor air quality is suicidal in my view. South East Warrington is already land-locked with two canels, two motorways and one over-stretched trunk road (A49) bordering the area making it very difficult to circumnavigate around traffic congestion problems, Unless significant investment (train or tram) in public transport is made or multiple new canal bridges are built, the whole of South Warrington will simply grid lock on a daily basis as it comes close to doing most days already. When a motorway is closed or heavily congested (seems to be multiple days per month now), the whole area is already impossible to travel around by road so adding many thousand extra cars to the local area is going to be disastrous.
This local plan is a step forward from the 2019 version but it is still not sound in so many ways and could be much more effective in my view if it focused on (1) better use of existing Brownfield sites near the town centre, (2) if the Green Belt release was minimised further but also spread evenly around the Borough with a limit being set on how much the Green Belt boundary in any given location can move by (I would suggest 100m max) and (3) if the plan included much more clarity on how public transport and road infrastructure would be significantly improved to help overcome both existing congestion and new congestion from new housing).