On 6 September 2016 the residents of Firswood Road and surrounding areas received a leaflet from Pegasus Group for and on behalf of Bellway Homes, relating to its proposed construction of 94 new build homes on an open site of rural farmland.

Firswood Road is a narrow and tranquil country road with open views. The proposed housing estate site is a wildlife corridor and located right on the Greenbelt boundary (west of Firswood Road is all designated Greenbelt).

Access to the estate would be off a narrow section of the road, whereby two cars cannot comfortably pass simultaneously or a single car cannot get around a parked car without moving into the lane of potentially oncoming traffic, near an already dangerous and narrow hump back bridge and uncontrolled and tight T-junction with Blauguegate Lane. This site is has also been known to suffer from surface water flooding.

The new proposed new estate would undoubtedly spoil the rural look and feel of the area comprised of historically designated small holdings dating back to the early 1800s in many cases. The area represents an important buffer between the built up Skelmersdale and rural Lathom.

The development would result in a minimum of 188 more cars (based on 2 cars per household although note that the properties are to be mainly three and four bedroomed therefore this figure is conservative) down Firswood Road. Firswood Road currently only has 44 houses on it in total stretching the entire length of the road therefore the new homes would cause terrible and dangerous traffic problems as well as a great loss of the wildlife (there are barn owls and bats among other significant animal inhabitants known to populate the proposed site).

We would very much like to pull together in order to resist Bellway's proposals and to gain as much support in this campaign as possible in order to try to prevent the character of this area being spoilt beyond repair.