PLANS to build three houses in historic Lydgate have come under fire, 13 months after proposals for just one property were rejected.
Saddleworth Parish Council and local authority highways engineers have already recommended refusal of the development off Stockport Road.
And the permission in principle application (PIP) – submitted on behalf of Mr S Leigh by Emery Planning – has been overwhelmingly rejected by people responding via Oldham Council’s planning portal.
Only one person out of 36 public responses was in favour of the development, opposite the White Hart and adjacent to St Anne’s Church.
In support of the application Emery state: “This is fundamentally different to that refused scheme.
“The indicative plans presented have been carefully and sensitively considered and informed by a new development team, which includes heritage specialists.”
However, a 47-page heritage statement makes no reference to research suggesting the location is thought to be the birthplace of the suffragette movement.
The Independent reported in 2017 how Helen Leach and Grasscroft-based work colleague Danny Brierley discovered how the prominent spot – above the Lydgate rail tunnel – hosted a meeting of social reformers on May 4, 1818. This was 61 years before the birth of Springhead-raised suffragette Annie Kenney.
Emery’s statement added: “This new planning application reflects a fundamentally different concept for the site and has been carefully designed to integrate well with the character of the area and now comprises limited infill development for the purposes of Green Belt planning policy.
“The indicative plans submitted show that the proposed scheme would integrate well with the general character of the street scene and the Lydgate village setting.
“It is important to note that this PIP application only seeks approval for the principle of 3 no. dwellings with all other detail to be resolved through a Stage 2 process eg. siting, design, size, layout and means of access.”
The new proposals have done little to allay local concerns. One objector wrote: “Although the proposed developers of this site have showered their application with maps, graphs, heritage information and photographs, in no way does any of it negate the objections put forward last year to refuse planning permission for this same site.”
Another person commented: “Regardless of a new ‘quality’ design proposal supposedly more in keeping with the local architecture, surely the comprehensive reasons given by the councils’ rejection of the previous application are still overwhelmingly relevant in this case, despite the strenuous efforts of the applicant to circumvent them.”
And a third said: “The previous application for building on this land was denied for many reasons, now not one but THREE structures are proposed so all the objections are still relevant.”
The previous application was for one three-storey, five bedroomed property. It was rejected on March 5, 2021.
I grew up in Blakely, (Village,) which in my grandmother’s time, (the 1930s,) was indeed a small village and in many respects as much an outlier of Greater Manchester as Saddleworth now is of Oldham; which is itself being overrun by the Greater Manchester Conurbation.
Now of course Blakely is simply just another North Manchester suburb in most respects all but indistinguishable from any of the others.
Given the population of the UK is already around 65 million and rising, (contrast that with New Zealand’s 5 million,) compounded by constant immigration and generating an increasingly desperate need for housing; it’s hard to believe that Saddleworth can hold out indefinitely; it’s even questionable if they should be allowed to ?
Village life is all very well and good for the tiny minority of people who can afford it, but for the vast majority of people living in the UK it’s not so much a dream as a fantasy.