PETITION TO WIRRAL COUNCIL: Protect Our Greenbelt, Prioritise Brownfield Regeneration, and Reject the Vineyard Farm (Spital) Development Proposal

To be submitted to Wirral Council Planning Department

Petition Statement:

We, the undersigned residents and campaigners, strongly urge Wirral Council to reject any planning application for major residential development on the 24 hectares of farmland at Vineyard Farm, Bebington (reference context: SCO/26/01368).  

This proposal undermines the integrity of our local plan, threatens our urban core regeneration strategy, and fails to address actual local housing and infrastructure needs.

Why this application must be refused:

1. Breach of the Local Plan and the "Brownfield-First" Commitment:

Wirral’s Local Plan has been carefully formulated around a strict brownfield-first policy, protecting our precious Greenbelt and agricultural land. Permitting a massive 450-home development on 24 hectares of open farmland sets a dangerous precedent, fractures our local ecological networks, and tears up the spatial strategy painstakingly developed to protect our green spaces.

2. Undermining Urban Regeneration:

True sustainability means breathing new life into our towns, not sprawling out onto green fields. Wirral has fantastic, ambitious regeneration plans focused on urban and dockland brownfield sites across the borough (such as Birkenhead and Wallasey). Diverting attention, capital, and resources toward greenfield suburban sprawl actively threatens these vital urban renaissance projects, starving them of the momentum they require.

3. Inflated Housing Targets Disconnected from Demographic Reality:

The housing targets forcing these speculative applications trace back to top-down, one-size-fits-all formulas introduced by the previous Conservative government—targets that have been further exacerbated by the current Labour government’s push to override local planning discretion. Census statistics clearly show that Wirral’s population is not growing at the pace these inflated government algorithms assume. Local planning must reflect actual local demographic need, not arbitrary national quotas.

4. Failing to Utilise Existing Housing Stock:

It is fiscally and environmentally irresponsible to concrete over green spaces when Wirral has over 2,000 empty houses sitting vacant. Solving the housing crisis requires policy mechanisms that bring empty and derelict properties back into productive use first, rather than handing developers easy profits on greenfield sites.

5. Severe Infrastructure Deficit:

Local public services are already at a breaking point. The proposal includes no provisions for the substantial extra strain 450 new households will place on local services. There are no guarantees or funding models for building additional local schools, expanding GP surgeries, or upgrading strained local drainage and highway networks to cope with the influx.