From Jonathan Reynolds’ “Roundup” (05/03/2021)
Godley Green Garden Village
Readers may know that I am supportive of plans to build a new, imaginative garden village development in Godley Green. A dedicated website has now been launched to showcase the plans and keep the public up to date, along with an initial consultation.
The council’s plan, in short, is for two multi-purpose village centres, which include community, health and retail facilities to serve adjacent residential development. Generous proportions of public open space are factored in, within a ten minute walk of both proposed and existing residential areas. Two train stations -Hattersley and Godley- serve the site, and the plans include significant investment in them, as well as the local road network. The original garden development movement had its roots in the early public health movement and was strongly driven by the need to give people a better quality housing and better quality of life.
I appreciate there will be strong views on both sides when it comes to an ambitious project of this kind. However, the housing crisis is one of the biggest problems facing the UK over the next generation, and I believe every MP and every leader within a local authority has to ask themselves what they are doing to actively play their part to build more decent quality homes and accompanying infrastructure.
Consideration of any scheme like this has to be understood with regard to how national housing policy operates. When national government decide how many new houses it expects local areas to provide, local councils then have to allocate sufficient sites in their local plans to meet this. If they do not, developers who are denied planning permission can overturn that local decision on appeal on the basis that there are not other alternatives available.
The problem across Greater Manchester is that there are insufficient brownfield sites to meet housing demand over the next twenty years. Even by working together across the conurbation and transferring significant parts of our housing quota for Tameside into Manchester and Salford city centres, we do not have enough. It is only because of this shortfall between our available brownfield sites and our housing needs that any consideration of greenbelt release can take place.
Ultimately, we do need more homes. I believe we must recognise that the deal offered to young people in the UK – housing at a cost which is now several multiples of what it was for previous generations – is not fair or sustainable. Housing ownership is only obtainable for most young people because interest rates have been historically low over the last decade, but we should not expect this to last forever.
Brownfield sites are central to the plans that have been drawn up for Tameside, with a particular focus on town centre development which I strongly support. The success in rapidly filling the apartments in Summer’s Quay in Stalybridge town centre has shown there is a market for town centre residential developments. In addition, we still have some former employment sites, such as ABC Wax in Hyde, that are now allocated for housing development. But unfortunately, we just do not have enough Brownfield sites for them to provide everything we need.
Housing development is always unpopular. Some of this unpopularity is unreasonable, as we all need somewhere to live, but I also recognise there are completely understandable reasons for it. New housing brings increased traffic, and greater competition for school places and local health services. I also have seen many developments locally by private developers which are of dubious quality, built with little regard to existing residents and communities.
It is for that reason that I believe that in order to meet the Government’s national housing targets we should try something very different. Crucially I believe we must try and address the legitimate concerns about the pressures new housing creates, and ensure new housing comes with new services and infrastructure alongside it. I believe the only time this has ever been achieved nationally in housing policy is when the new towns were built after the Second World War. Whilst building completely new towns would not be realistic today, I do think the principles of these developments could be applied on a smaller scale with the creation of new villages in existing areas. This is what the proposal for GGGV is based on.
I therefore see the GGGV as a means of approaching the housing targets set by the Government in a much stronger way, with environmental sustainability at its core to produce a genuine mix of housing types. I think this is vastly superior to a lot of generic developer estates being delivered without any infrastructure or public say in what type of housing is built. It is only through local authority-led planning can the infrastructure demands of building new homes – roads, public transport, schools, health services, all of which are included within the designs for GGGV – be met at the same time. Leaving the building of new homes to private contractors means infrastructure constraints always playing catchup and that is not good enough.
The accessibility of public transport was a significant factor embedded into the initial designs for GGGV. The most prominent aspect of this is the site’s adjacency with Hattersley train station. The development will be phased over a significant period of time and includes significantly improving the capacity of the station (including the extension of platforms) as and when the appropriate trigger points are reached. Local bus services would also be improved to support the development, and in addition the Mottram bypass should be completed in the next few years.
Naturally, there will be a diversity of views on this subject. However, if we don’t answer our local housing crisis with a carefully considered, well planned vision such as Godley Green, the alternative would be for many more sites for housing needing to be found and that would also be very difficult. You can learn all about the initial proposals for the scheme here, and respond to the initial consultation here.