Plan will avoid urban sprawl - council leader

Jane Ashworth wears glasses, a beaded necklace, and red blazer, she is standing next to a sign for a train station. Image source, Stoke-on-Trent City Council
Image caption,

Stoke-on-Trent city council leader Jane Ashworth says the local plan will be consulted on again, with more detail next year, before it is finalised.

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The leader of Stoke-on-Trent City Council has defended the decision to keep protected green belt sites in the city's plan for future development.

Thousands of residents have objected to large-scale housing proposals around the edge of the city included in the draft local plan.

People living in Bucknall, Lightwood and Norton Green have shared concerns, with residents in Packmoor calling for farmland in the village earmarked for at least 800 homes, to be ruled out.

Councillor Jane Ashworth said villagers' concerns would be dealt with before planning permission was given.

The leader said she believed it was a good idea to develop council-owned farmland in Packmoor, but accepted residents had valid concerns: "They do not want Packmoor to become a big sprawl.

"Similarly they want to make sure there is green space, and the roads have got to be sorted out."

The plan has become a controversial topic after the first round of consultation led to petitions calling for the authority to exhaust brownfield sites first.

Ashworth said 73% of planned sites for housing and economic use were classed as brownfield.

She said: "We want to build on brownfield sites, we want to bring back heritage buildings into use, and we want to clean the land."

When asked whether, as the local planning authority, the council was prepared to protect green belt land by not allocating it in the plan, she said the authority would ask for government money to focus on "dirty" land.

"We will protect public open space across the city, but there are some parts of it where we need housing to be built, because we have an expanding population."

Twelve sites in the plan sit wholly or partially on green belt land, external, a legal definition giving stronger protection against development.

The local authority is under pressure to meet the government's target to build 1.5 million homes, by delivering 948 properties a year by 2029.

A man with cropped, greying hair smiles at the camera. He is standing on a street with a building behind him in the half-light, illuminated by street lights
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Darren Bamford is campaigning against development around the city's edge

Packmoor resident Darren Bamford, who has campaigned for his area to be excluded from the plan entirely, argued the local plan only focused on the outside part of the city, in effect turning it into a "Polo": "You drive through Tunstall, Burslem, Hanley, Longton. They've been underdeveloped, and they've been left. This plan doesn't seem to be tackling anything to do with them."

The authority is, according to its leader, urging more developers to come forward: "We are chasing down brownfield sites which could make a contribution to the number of houses that we could build in the city".

The plan will be revised with more detail and consulted on again next year before it becomes a finalised blueprint for building over the next few years.

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