Opposing the Adlington New Town proposals

Adlington New Town overview

The news was received with shock, plus disbelief that a rural part of Cheshire’s Green Belt with virtually no infrastructure could be considered a suitable location for a new town.

The proposed site covers around 1,000 hectares of Green Belt – land which currently produces significant quantities of milk, lamb, beef and potatoes.

Accommodating between 14,000 and 20,000 new homes, the town would house around 47,000 people. This would make it similar in size to Macclesfield.

Though the developers – Belport – claim that the town would be a stand alone settlement, it would in fact be anything but. A development of this size would close up the gaps between Poynton, Bollington and Macclesfield. Combined with the continuing development of the Woodford airfield site and further developments in the pipeline between Hazel Grove and Stockport, the result would be the expansion of the Greater Manchester conurbation deep into Cheshire.

While there are small railway stations at Poynton, Adlington and Prestbury, these only provide limited services between Manchester and Stoke on Trent because all three sit (consecutively) on the West Coast Main Line which has to accommodate fast inter-city trains barrelling through them at between 70 and 90 mph.

There would be major issues with water and sewage capacity.

On top of this, many pockets of land lie in the flood zones of the Rivers Bollin and Dean. And former coal mines with unmapped worked coal seams lie hidden beneath the surface.

Details of the proposals remain very sketchy. However, an initial indicative master plan can be seen at www.adlingtonnewtown.com (scroll to the bottom of the page).