Council Publish Updates to the Parkside Phase 1 Planning Application and the St Helens Local Plan
Parkside Phase 1 Planning Application
The Council have published updates to both the Parkside Phase 1 Planning Application and the St Helens Local Plan. We have provided details to the updates on the links below on our web site.
The Phase 1 Planning application is unchanged in principle other than the developer (Langtree in partnership with St Helens Council) have taken on board our comment concerning their original traffic flow assumptions which stated that 90% of the traffic would turn south out of the site onto the A49 bound for Winwick, and only 10% would head north towards Newton High Street. Quite how anyone could come to this conclusion beggers belief and surely calls into question the integrity of the developer? Clearly making such false assumptions depreciates traffic impacts on the High Street and associated air quality impacts. The developer has remodelled the data now on a 60:40 model (although some parts say 50:50, and others mention 90:10?). The revised model not surprisingly shows that all High Street junctions would be over capacity with the development in place. No mitigation is offered other than vague statements indicating that traffic signals would not improve the situation. We would encourage you to email or write to the Council, details of who to contact can be found here. You may comment up to the point of determination (planning committee meeting).
PAG Response to Planning Application
St Helens New Local Plan
A second issue of the New Local Plan has been published by the Council for comment. This issue will come before a planning inspector who will chair a process called ‘Examination in Public’ or EIP. The inspector will only focus on areas of the plan where he/she sees contention or ambiguity from the comments that the Council has received. Therefore hopefully your previous comments will contribute to his/her consideration. Notably Parkside West has been completely omitted from the latest issue, presumably because the Council see this as a done deal which is far from the case. Both Parkside West and East are still proposed to be removed from the Green Belt with Parkside East remaining reserved for a Strategic Rail Freight Terminal. We would encourage you to comment on the second issue of the plan. To do this you will need to download the comment form from the Council’s web site and return it to them. We encourage you to indicate that the plan is unsound being contrary to strong public objection to the site being removed from Green Belt, inappropriate development in respect of adjacent residential areas, and the likelihood of significant increased traffic impacts and associated health impacts caused by depreciated air quality. Site traffic is also likely to further depreciate air quality in Air Quality Management Areas in vicinity of the site caused by increased traffic levels. The previous Prologis application which included development on both Parkside East and Parkside West anticipated introducing 17,000 extra vehicles/day to our local road network. The consultation on the second issue of the plan closes on 13/03/2019.
SHC Representation Form Guidance
SHC Representation Form (pdf)
SHC Representation Form (doc)
The Council are also holding some drop in sessions at different locations throughout February, for example Newton Library, Newton-le-Willows – Thursday 14th February, 2pm–6.30pm. All the sessions are detailed on the Councils Web Site.