Hello, id like to introduce myself. Its a long one so grab a brew! In 2010 I moved into a new house in Winstanley in Wigan and a week later Wigan Council announced they wanted to use the green belt behind our house for industrial units. I formed a group called M6South of Wigan Action Group. After two years and a lot of help from members (who eventually added more weight to the argument than me!) we won the fight and that part of the core strategy was scrapped. Recently, I pitched in and helped some close friends who have now got a fight on their hands only across the road, in Bryn. This time its different as the council are claiming the land to be brownfield as its supposedly ex mining spoil and therefore its now a fight to defend an actual planning proposal. Search Facebook for Bryn Against Development and have a scroll through the posts and see the flavour of discussions... Unfortunately Im in the middle of launching a business at the moment so my time is extremely limited, but Ill offer what I can and Id offer up the following advice to your group: 1) Form a committee - now! You will need 6-10 committed people who can organise, liaise, communicate and decipher reams of information. These people will be the backbone of the fight. When formed, make a pact to leave egos, political persuasion and commercial interests out of everything. Your group STRICTLY needs to be apolitical. Politics will slow down progress, cause tensions and will distract you from your job in hand. On both campaigns Ive been involved in local politicians where really enthusiastic to play a part and spread their colours on the back of the campaign. One of them was from a party not well received and it was causing huge tension, so politics is a big NO! 2) Make a private/secret facebbok group just for the committee members, a place to discuss stuff away from the general public. Not for any suspicious reasons, but reasons of simplicity and away from the main forum where one word questions could end up with 100 comments and everyone falling out, it will happen! 3) Get some Branding/image for your group. Make it emotive and let people see what they could miss. 4) Hold a community meeting and enlist your army! Get names and addresses of helpers and get to know whos good at what and who is willing to commit to the cause. You will need to set up a fund for printing of leaflets, banners etc. Then get them printed and delivered everywhere! Now you have your group you can now organise things, sing from the same song sheet and go forward in Unison. Forgive me as Id not read anything related to the actual development but what I have read mentions Core Strategy so I can confidently say the following and it may make some sense and give you all some pointers. WHAT IS THE CORE STRATEGY? Every council has to answer to government. They have to prove what they are doing to address matters such as housing and employment. The council for have a Core Strategy/Development plan to address housing and employment shortages. I suspect the council will be looking to address a housing shortage. Wigan has an alleged shortage of 25,000 new homes. So instead of refurbishing the couple of thousand empty ones abandoned its easier to give up land to developers. WHY?? simple - Money. The council will receive a windfall from Department for Communities which will average annual council tax for 6 years for each property. Example being 1,500 Band D houses (say £1500 per annum council tax) could mean a £13.5m incentive. Then the revenue from those houses council tax means theres a lot of extra money coming into the local chambers coffers! So, what do you need to do. Firstly, Ive noted youve got a MASSIVE head start with a brilliant petition and youre already raising the profile and getting the word out. Well done each and every one of you, excellent start. Im not sure about Knowsley but Wigan MBC dont accept petitions en masse as a way of objecting, 50,000 signatures = one objection. I note there is a form for your objection so Id guess that they are (like Wigan were) asking for a reasoned argument as to the soundness of their plan. To do that you will need to do the following: Download the plan (make sure its the latest version - they evolve) Read it and digest why the want the plan to happen and what their aim is. Quantify their figures and dissect them, challenge them. An example was Wigan claimed 5000 jobs would be created in logistics, on a 40 acre site. We proved this was massively exaggerated and unrealistic and used an example of a 20 acre site that employed 600 over a shift pattern. Get details of your local councillors and MPs, get on their backs and force them to reveal their position on this. Wigan is notoriously favoured towards Labour councillors and it appeared all 75 councillors towed the party line.. Nobody will stick their neck out one Iota. Get vital statistics on pollution in the area. The council will have data from their pollution monitoring sites. Find out what wildlife is on the site and how they plan to manage that - but be cautious, Wildlife alone wont win the fight. They can often be moved/worked around. Ask the council for a list of the properties notified of this plan. As a rule the draw a line around the area and send a letter to the properties on that line. Wigan claimed to send 500 out, when we referred it to google maps they sent over 100 to addresses that were not available, 55 of them were to apartments not even built! Find anything you can in the information to disprove their case is built on incorrect/inaccurate information. Lastly, through freedom of information act ask if they have been approached by any developers. Got to whatdotheyknow and put one in through that site, extremely easy to do so. If its genuine green belt then they have to have the plan agreed by planning inspector and they will through anything out that isnt sound, make sure you find the errors and youre on your way. Best of luck Mick
Posted on: Sun, 05 Oct 2014 09:52:53 +0000
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