Is greenbelt at more risk from move to protect it?

Stockport has plans to develop housing in the city centre, but it will likely need to find space for another 8,000 homes

A council's decision to pull out of a regional housing plan in a bid to protect its green belt may have put the land at greater risk of development in the long term, the opposition leader has claimed.

Stockport Council pulled out of Greater Manchester’s joint housing development plan in 2020, and made its own plan to deliver 16,000 new homes without developing any green belt sites.

But a review of the national housing framework by the new government means Stockport will potentially need to deliver twice as many homes as the region-wide plan required over the next 15 years.

Liberal Democrat council leader Mark Hunter said pulling out of the plan was "the right decision to protect our green belt" and that the council had faced a number of delays in implementing its own plan.

But Labour opposition leader David Meller told BBC Radio Manchester: "It didn't have to be that way".

"If we'd gone into the [Greater Manchester] Spatial Framework, that would have provided the protection and shared our [housing] allocation with other boroughs within Greater Manchester."

He added: "Whereas now we're having to go on our own with a much higher number we've got to deliver and as a result we’ll have much more green belt taken."

'We had a plan'

A council meeting was held on Monday night to discuss where the further 16,000 home could be built, with a request for potential sites going out to the public.

Hunter said the council was "frustrated" by the government's change in policy and said the implementation of its previous plan had been delayed by reviews of the National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) by the former Tory government and now the new Labour government.

He told BBC Radio Manchester: "We had a plan to deliver those homes where they're needed here in Stockport."

"That would have delivered 85% of the national target," he added.

He said he did not intend to re-join the regional plan, which he said made Stockport "a target for developers" because of the amount of green space it has.

Hunter said the council's draft plan would be put out for public consultation regardless of the outcome of the government's broader housing review, which is due to be finished at the end of this year.