We would like to assure everyone that the campaign to save Royton’s Green Belt is still active. The summer was uneventful as far as Places for Everyone (PfE) is concerned, but there have been some developments in recent weeks. We will briefly bring you up to date on the Government's new housing targets, the judicial review, the Lib-Dem motion for Oldham to leave Places for Everyone and the next steps for our campaign.
New housing targets
The Government consultation on its proposed housing targets concluded last month. Its proposal would see the housing target for Oldham increase from 680 homes per year to 1,049. In the previous Local Plan the target was 289. The PfE target of 680 is based on out-of-date statistics, whilst the proposed target of 1,049 is picked out of thin air and isn’t based on any evidenced need whatsoever. The Government justifies this on the basis that the increasing un-affordability of housing is the result of supply failing to keep up with demand. This is not borne out by the facts—supply has outstripped the population increase over the last 20 years—and is more likely driven by interest rates, longer mortgage terms, and larger developer profit margins. Even if house-building on the scale proposed could be achieved, we are unlikely to get the public services and infrastructure that would be necessary to support all of these new homes.
Judicial review
In our last blog post, we informed you that Save Greater Manchester’s Green Belt had applied to the High Court for permission to judicial review the Places for Everyone plan. The Government has now applied to the Court to try and block permission, so SGMGB are having to go to court to get permission to go to court. This seems to be a lot of effort for the Labour Government to go to in order to block something that they told us was being imposed on them by the Tories. Unfortunately, in two-tier Britain, SGMGB is not on the fast tier. The permission hearing was originally scheduled for the end of October, but has now been adjourned to December 12th.
Lib-Dem motion to leave PfE
In July, the Lib Dems submitted a motion to ask the Government for permission to leave the plan. The Shaw independents amended the motion to schedule a “workshop” for councillors in September, in order to fully understand the process for leaving PfE and the consequences. Representatives from the Green Belt campaign groups were invited to attend a workshop last week. Despite being hamstrung by confirmational bias, it was an informative experience and we are grateful to the council for providing us with the opportunity. The most interesting thing to come out of the workshop is that it may not actually be legal for the same administration that adopted the plan to then request permission to leave the plan. So despite opposing PfE—and voting against its adoption in March—the four independent councillors from Shaw and Failsworth, who are now propping up the Labour administration following the local election elections earlier this year, may be inadvertently blocking Oldham’s legal exit from the plan.
The 200 club
Since the Thornham site and Hanging Chadder were dropped from PfE, the 200 club pledges have not been committed to the legal action. We hope to return this money in its entirety once the legal action is resolved. We don’t want to divest our funds only for our sites to end up back in the cross-hairs of developers. It took a lot of effort to raise the money and our other commitments mean we no longer have the time to do it all over again. We will have a better idea of the timescale after the permission hearing in December.
Once again, thank you for your ongoing support.
Yours sincerely
Save Royton's Greenbelt
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