Following months of fierce debates, Oldham council has voted to withdraw from a ‘controversial’ housing scheme at an extraordinary meeting held last night (February 12).
Council executives will have to write to the Secretary of State Angela Rayner to request the borough is withdrawn from Places for Everyone (PfE).
The Greater Manchester Combined Authority (GMCA) housing blueprint aims to bring 170,000 new homes to nine Greater Manchester boroughs, including 11,500 in Oldham.
The plans are supposed to use a ‘brownfield-first’ approach to help fight the housing crisis. But the scheme has long sparked resistance by campaign run by opposition groups over their inclusion of greenbelt land.
During an extensive debate at the council’s Civic Building, Oldham Lib Dem leader Howard Sykes said: “Expensive luxury housing on the greenbelt is not the answer to the housing crisis. This will be a developer and profit-led plan, not a people and need based plan.
“Is Labour really suggesting that the best Oldham can do is back a plan that was designed in Manchester ten years ago, with no idea about the local challenges we face? I think we can do better.”
Land in Beal Valley, Bottom Field Farm, Broadbent Moss, south of Coal Pit Lane, and south of Rosary Road are all due to be developed as part of the scheme. Sykes added that he felt Labour had used ‘every trick in the book’ to delay writing the letter to Rayner, with others commenting the meeting felt like ‘groundhog day’.
Opposition groups had believed they had already voted to withdraw from PfE during a meeting in November. But according to council executives, they had merely rejected a report by officers that found withdrawing from the scheme at this late stage ‘may not be legal’.
Labour councillors maintained it would ‘be a mistake’ to withdraw from PfE. Without a local plan in place, the borough would be left with ‘no protection’ of greenbelt land and the council would have to find space for an additional 1,000 homes under Labour’s new housing targets, according to councillors.
Council leader Arooj Shah said: “It shocks me how brazen some people are about misleading our residents. It would be a mistake for Oldham, for the greenbelt and for our residents who desperately need housing. It would lead to further developments on the greenbelt.
“The Lib Dems know that because it’s the same that’s playing out in Stockport … where [the Lib Dem leadership] are now dancing to the tune of developers.”
Stockport agreed to pull out of PfE in 2022. But without a local plan, it has struggled to oppose large-scale developments, such as the 278 homes now due to be built on the Gatley Golf Course.
The vote was won by 31 votes to 28 to loud applause from councillors and members of the public.
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