Concerns raised over peatland housebuilding plans

Campaigners seeking to prevent housebuilding on peatland in Cheshire have urged councillors to protect the land from property developers.

Bellway Homes wants to build 133 houses on an 11-acre (4.5 hectare) site at Lindow in Wilmslow, close to where Lindow Man - a 2,000-year-old bog body - was found in 1984.

Joanna Drake, from the Protect Lindow campaign, asked Cheshire East Council - which declined to comment during a live planning process - not to "lose really valuable natural resources and reserves in the scramble to build more houses quickly".

Bellway Homes said its plans adhered to both national and regional planning policy and stressed that 30% of the houses would be "affordable homes".

The Lindow Man's discovery is widely seen as one of the most significant archaeological finds in the Northwest of England.

The well-preserved remains are now held by the British Museum.

The proposed development site off Upcast Lane and Cumber Lane was allocated as safeguarded land and removed from the green belt under Cheshire East Council's 2017 local plan.

While no development plans were proposed at the time, it was listed as an area where building could potentially take place in future.

The authority's carbon neutral action plan - approved in 2020 - said Cheshire East Council wanted to develop restoration or management plans for all of its peatland areas.

Meanwhile, a council-commissioned review, published in 2021, recommended the extraction and development of peatlands across the borough "should be stopped immediately".

Last month, the local authority withdrew plans for peatland near Macclesfield to be developed.

Council officers said proposals to build on Danes Moss "cannot be fully reconciled" with its peat and carbon policies.

Ms Drake said she wanted to see the council change its policies and review the whole local plan.

"I don't think anyone would disagree that more houses are required, she said. "We know there's a housing crisis in the UK.

"What is important is that those houses are built in the right place, that we don't lose really valuable natural resources and reserves in the scramble to build more houses quickly."

The Friends of Lindow Moss group, which wants to see the restoration of peatbogs in the area, is backing the Protect Lindow campaign.

"This is part of a much wider landscape, the Lindow Moss landscape," said its president John Handley.

"It was first zoned for safeguarded land in 2013 and an awful lot has happened since then, it is obviously not the appropriate thing to do.

"We'd like to see a systematic review by Cheshire East Council of potential housing sites across the borough to allocate land in an appropriate and a rational way.

"That would allow this site to be reclassified and put back into the green belt."

Some local councillors have also raised their concerns.

As well as being Cheshire East Council's deputy leader, independent Michael Gorman is a ward councillor for the area.

"It might sound absurd [but] you wouldn't build a housing estate next to Stonehenge.

"I'm not saying Lindow Moss is Stonehenge in any stretch of the imagination but it's an incredibly important site - we need to take care of it for our children and grandchildren."

Another independent councillor in the area, Mark Goldsmith, chairs the local authority's highways and transport committee.

He said the Lindow plans were "the wrong development in the wrong place".

"It's not nimbyism - there are great brownfield sites in the centre of town that should have the housing. This just isn't appropriate," said Goldsmith.

"It's historic, it's environmentally sensitive, it just should never have been earmarked for development."

In a statement, Bellway Homes said it plans included "contributions towards education, health and the local environment, which will benefit the whole community, not just our home buyers.

"As part of these plans, Bellway has undertaken extensive assessments and ground investigations which have informed our planning application."

The Lindow application is open for consultation until Thursday.

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