Wigan councillors throw out plans for more Standish homes

Members of the Wigan committee defied the advice of their officers to turn down the application from Persimmon Homes, one of the UK’s biggest developers.

This was despite an offer of £285,000 from the publicly-listed company to contribute towards health and education facilities.

Councillors heard the village’s only health centre has three GPs but needs 10.

One member of the committee, Coun Laura Flynn, cited the Standish Neighbourhood Plan as grounds for preventing further development in the village, which has gone well beyond specified limits of 1,000 new properties since it was approved in 2019.

Coun Flynn said: “I fully understand why this has been recommended for approval [by planning officers]. There’s electric vehicle charging points and solar panels etc.

“But I think we have to test out the Standish Neighbourhood Plan, which states that all [the necessary] infrastructure has to be in place before plans [for new homes] are approved. This is clearly not the case.”

She alluded to two appeals to the planning inspectorate for developments in Standish which Wigan council lost before the Standish Neighbourhood Plan came into effect.

“Already those developments are having a detrimental effect on Standish as a place to live,” she added.

Coun Stuart Gerrard agreed: “Until Coun Flynn spoke, I was going to agree to this application, but I think she’s right that we should test this. Standish is bursting with new properties.”

The committee was told how there was a crisis in the recruitment of GPs at Standish Medical Practice where there has been an influx of new patients because of the number of new properties in the village. Currently there are only three, when 10 are needed.

Coun Matthew Dawber agreed with Coun Flynn. He said that there were good points about the Persimmons application, including the allocation of 25 per cent affordable housing.

“But we can’t ignore the health impacts we’ve had [in Standish] over the last decade,” he said.

“There’s no guarantee that the £285,000 contribution (known as Section 106 cash) will be used for what is being said and anyway I don’t think it’s enough to tackle the problems we have in the village.”

The refusal of the scheme on land behind Pepper Lane came in the wake of another application for a standalone access road to five properties on Fairhurst Lane, off Chorley Road following the demolition of a bungalow, which was also turned down against officers’ recommendations.

Councillors believe the bid from Bolton-based Seddon Homes would be a prelude to another application for housing development.

Again, Coun Flynn referenced the Standish Neighbourhood Plan which protects ‘amenity green space’ in the village.

Currently, Fairhurst Lane is a potholed access road and the Seddon plan would have created a 5.5 metre wide road with kerbs on both sides.

Coun John Harding described the application as being "a bit disingenuous.” “It would be naive to believe this is an access road to just five properties when there may or may not be a further application for more properties,” he said.

Both applications – opposed by local pressure group Standish Voice – were turned down by a voting margin of seven to six.

Following the meeting, a spokesperson for Standish Voice said: “We are relieved and grateful that the planning committee upheld policies in Standish Neighbourhood Plan and understood the importance of local democracy and local people being able to have a say in how their community develops.

“Standish has had a huge housebuilding programme over the past decade, with almost 2,000 new homes set to increase our population by a quarter without any significant increase in infrastructure.

“The people of Standish – encouraged by Wigan Council – put their faith in the planning system to protect it from yet more overdevelopment with the creation of Standish Neighbourhood Plan, which only allows sustainable development. The planning committee has rightly agreed that to ride roughshod over these plan policies – which council officers were recommending – would be wrong, undemocratic and deeply damaging to our community.

“The NHS locally gave a very stark warning against more development, which could overwhelm our already overloaded GP services – an alert which was not reflected in the planning officer’s report to the extent of misleading the committee. But councillors saw through this and rightly concluded that to overload our infrastructure even more would be a dereliction of their duty.

“We have no doubt that the developers will appeal against these refusals but when they do, we expect Wigan Council to mount a robust, comprehensive defence of these decisions and Standish Neighbourhood Plan.

“We would like to thank our Standish councillors and the hundreds of people who objected to these applications – and who supported the development of the Neighbourhood Plan. You have helped to turn the tide of unsustainable overdevelopment in our lovely village.”

A Persimmon North West spokesperson said: “We are disappointed that committee members have not upheld the recommendation of approval made by the case officer.

“As the case officer’s report says, this development will support local housing needs and create a visually attractive modern development.

“The new Labour government has rightly put housing at the top of their agenda so it’s incredibly disappointing that a Labour council has not taken the opportunity to deliver much-needed new affordable housing for local people.”