We’d like to thank Councillor Tom Besford for the following response to our Petition.

I share many of those concerns and as such will be voting against the GMSF when it comes to Full Council.

Given what I’ve said above though, voting against the GMSF is not enough to protect our Green Belt and could arguably see us losing more of it. Councils have a legal requirement to deliver a specific number of homes (as set out by the government), and apart from anything else it is the right thing to do. New proposals coming in from the Department of Housing, Communities and Local Government will mean even less community involvement in future planning matters. Without a spatial framework of any sort, developers can choose to build on all the sites in the proposals, and more. If a Council opposes them without legal grounds, the developers can and will sue Councils to overturn this decision, costing us all more money and still seeing these sites built on. The GMSF will ultimately protect land not included within it from this kind of development, it will commit developers to responsible and carbon neutral building projects, and will also commit developers to upgrade and provide additional local amenities such as schools.

Therefore I support the idea of a spatial framework, but I do not support the specific proposals in this one. I cannot support building executive houses on green belt in Littleborough, when our roads are already too full, we have too few school places, pressure on local amenities and threats to our local environment. I will be voting against, but I know that in doing so without a plan for a replacement framework runs a greater risk that the power to choose will be removed from us all and this land and more will be built on anyway, but this time purely for the financial gain of the developers with little recourse to social or environmental responsibility.

Councillor Tom Besford

Littleborough Lakeside