PEEL HOLDINGS and SALFORD CITY COUNCIL
This year Peel Holdings has got to be content to share this MARY with the well deserving Salford City Council. The gruesome twosome have been very active, yet again, in trying to trash Salford's Green Belt, particularly around the Barton area.
Peel Holdings, which owns virtually the whole of the Green Belt around Barton and Chat Moss, has been busy finalising the economic exploitation of green land with its Racecourse and Forest Park in Worsley, and its Port Salford freight terminal, complete with seven track train line and polluting lorries. Peat mining sites on its precious Salford bog land have been controversial and possibly illegal for years.
Meanwhile, right opposite Peel Holdings' Port Salford development in Barton, Salford Council has helpfully proposed in its `Draft Core Strategy' to give away 40 hectares (98 acres) of Green Belt land for industrial warehousing.
The Council has smugly added that "we're proposing to set aside another 40 hectares of land in Little Hulton as new Green Belt to compensate for the loss of Green Belt at Barton". But most people, surely, always thought that land is Green Belt for a reason – ie that it's vital and must be protected – not to be swapped around on a whim like a Match Attax trading card.
Up by this new possible Green Belt land, the Council is also proposing that another 10 hectares of land on the Cutacre site in Little Hulton be turned over to `industry and warehousing' in league with Bolton Council's plans to massacre the Green Belt in the area…
On the housing horizon too, according to the Council's Strategic Housing Land Availability Assessment, are `deliverable' plans for 647 dwellings on Greenfield sites before 2027. The Assessment adds that there are further sites for a massive 3,437 dwellings in Salford's Green Belt and 9,342 dwellings in Greenfield sites that are currently considered `not deliverable' but deliverable "should obstacles to their delivery be overcome".
While all this is happening, the Council continues to argue that by 2027 the vision is to make "the city greener by creating more open spaces, parks, footpaths, cycle ways and recreation facilities". It also talks about "recognising the potential of Chat Moss and identifying that different areas of mosslands have important biodiversity".
Flashing its green credentials the Council adds that it aims, by 2027, to "restore some of the mosslands to lowland raised bog" and won't allow any more peat extraction in the area which "will help us to reduce our carbon emissions". What the Council doesn't say, of course, is that the peat extraction, releasing shed loads of carbon, has taken place under its careful watch.
Community protest movements are springing up all over the place against the plans of both Peel Holdings and Salford Council, and the Salford Star will be covering everything in huge depth over the coming weeks. The next public demonstration is against the plans for the Barton Moss Green Belt and it's on Saturday 23rd January 12 noon, outside Parkfield Cottage, Liverpool Road, Irlam.
Ladies and Gentlemen. Raise your bogs and toast the winners of the `WE'RE SO GREEN IT (REALLY IS) UNBELIEVABLE' AWARD…
PEEL HOLDINGS and SALFORD CITY COUNCIL
Applause…
If anyone from these organisations would like to make a speech please fill in the Comments box below.
* You can see copies of Salford Council's Draft Core Strategy at libraries throughout the city and can comment on it here – but hurry up the closing date is 15th January 2010 at 4:30pm!
*** STOP PRESS*** 14th Jan 2010 4pm
PEEL'S PLANS FOR RACECOURSE REJECTED BY THE GOVERNMENT - click here..
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