Say NO to SIX56..!
Six56 Warrington
A personal view by Martin Jones
Why is this crucial to defeating the Warrington Plan?
Many people will be quite rightly alarmed at the raft of proposals for industrial development in the Green Belt in South Warrington. On its own it’s going to have an enormous impact on Warrington. However, although in conjunction with The Peel Port, Stobart’s and Six56 developments will represent the new southern edge of Warrington of almost continuous distribution buildings and industrial Buildings.
Along the M56 from Daresbury to Lymm we are looking at an industrial development that will dwarf the Omega Park on the former Burtonwood airfield. Not only will this have a huge impact but because it’s being built largely in the Green belt it pushes the Green Belt boundary beyond these developments. The result is packets of former green belt parcels adjoining the Villages of Appleton, Grappenhall, Stockton Heath and Lymm. They will be picked off by housing developments. The fact that many of these fields have either been bought or have purchase options already taken out on them by property speculators.
Defeating Stobarts and Six56 are fundamental to protecting our green belt and restricting mass housing in the South Warrington area.
What is the SIX56 development?
Developments like SIX56 can be seen alongside the motorway network all over the UK. You only have to go as far as the Warrington Omega site to see the kind of buildings that are going to be built. I have been with the BBC to a large number of distribution sites including a live breakfast broadcast from Hermes in Warrington. The sheer scale is huge. High ceiling, circuit road vehicle parks, truck wash, fuel depot, security fencing and lighting towers. These centres usually run 24 hours a day so there are constant truck movements in and out of the site. Staff work shifts so there will be staff vehicles adding to the 24/7/365 traffic in the area.
Anyone who has tried to drive through Warrington on a day when the M6 has an accident on it will know the devastating effect it has on the already congested roads. We are going to add tens of thousands of Heavy Goods movements to that traffic and they will all use those busy roads like the A49, A50 and A56. When I was passing the Stobarts site in a works vehicle I pulled over in a 6.4 Tonne truck and punched in routes avoiding the M6 or M56 using the truckers Tom Tom. All the diverts took me through Warrington, Lymm, Grappenhall, Appleton etc. Any truck driver faced with a motorway closure or serious delay would be making a decision based on that information on that road and diverting down our streets past our houses and schools. Noise and traffic pollution will be constant combined with Light pollution from these site particularly in its rural setting will have a dramatic impact far beyond the 381 acres of the site.
SIX56 and the Green Belt
The plan calls for a site of 381 acres of which the majority, 252 acres, are currently in the Green Belt. This is the MOST IMPORTANT fight possibly in the whole ongoing fight with the council. Green Belt is a developer’s worst enemy and it is our very best friend. It’s very misunderstood and doesn’t mean necessarily green fields. So what is Green Belt and how does it work? The Government says:
“There is generally a presumption in favour of development in planning. The onus is placed on the local planning authority to provide sound planning reasons why a planning application should be refused permission. In areas designated as Green Belt, the presumption is reversed and the onus is on the developer to demonstrate (with very special circumstances) why permission should be granted. This difference makes Green Belt an exceedingly restrictive policy. With the restrictions that Green Belt brings, local planning authorities with Green Belt in their areas and with Local Plans to prepare, have to make provision for needed development within a very sensitive context.”
Its definition is in 5 Purposes:
1) to check the unrestricted sprawl of large built up areas
2) to prevent neighbouring towns from merging into one another
3) to assist in safeguarding the countryside from encroachment
4) to preserve the setting and special character of historic towns
5) to assist in urban regeneration by encouraging the recycling of derelict and other urban land.
Every proposal for development in the Green Belt will be tested against these points. If you make a banner, flag or get a tattoo get theses 5 points on them. They are like garlic to a vampire because they will stop a development in its tracks.
HOWEVER!!! Any development that is turned down can be re submitted or go to numerous appeals. What a developer’s barrister is looking for is where an exception has been made for another application. The argument goes if that part of the Green Belt can be built of for whatever reasons it’s been granted why not the adjoining or nearby land. It undermines the legal defence.
Also remember that in planning appeals they are heard by the local planning authority which in our case is Warrington Borough Council.
People who are opposed to the wide scale development of Warrington need to fight for every square inch of Green Belt. This is where I differ with people who think our best defence is making a neighbourhood plan.
In the recent planning meeting that rejected the first Stobart’s application, the fact that a neighbourhood plan was in place was not mentioned by the developer or more worryingly the WBC planning officer once showed it has no influence whatsoever. These plans invite you to offer up your own green belt and invite in the developers to make post plan applications using the residents own plan against them. If you don’t think I’m correct, ask why so many developers are keen to be involved? It’s like asking a wolf what he would like on the Menu. Anyway, neighbourhood plans are for another article.
Fighting the SIX56
Hopefully if you have read this so far, you like me are certain that you don’t want this development. What actions can you take?
Politics: The council makes the decision on all these matters. Convince enough members of the council that it’s a bad idea……. they vote it down…..it goes away. Having worked on think 5 referenda, every general election, most northern bi elections and a whole host of local elections, I don’t trust or believe any politician or political party. What people forget is they are very scared of you the voter. Warrington South in particular is a very marginal swing seat. All parties fight hard for it and particularly in a hung parliament one seat can make all the difference. All parties will be willing to listen.
Having spoken to other groups who have fought local plans the idea I like the best is the “three letter” approach. You write a brief letter explaining why you don’t like the wider plan or a specific planning application.
a) You write to the MP.
b) You write to the chairman/woman of the local party
c) You write to the chairman/woman of the national party.
In each letter you explain that this issue will have a very serious influence how you vote in both local and national elections. This feeds into their campaign information and may well result in local councillors getting the “Curley finger from head office. It’s worth writing to your local councillor and even better meeting them at a surgery eyeball to eyeball.
Debunking: How do the facts and assertions stand up to scrutiny? A planning application particularly one that wants to overturn the protected status of Green Belt land must make a very good and solid case. Anyone who was at the Stobarts meeting would have seen what can only described as a shoddy ill prepared case that came apart under scrutiny.
Anything that goes in front of an inspector will have to be solid because we the public will be able to cross question and challenge them. Government inspectors are no fools and will not tolerate poor information or inaccuracies. The more we can undermine assumptions, challenge and cause doubt or disprove figures that they present; the weaker their case becomes.
Anyone who has read the leaflet that was delivered to a small number of houses will notice that it is light on detail and pulls in some vague facts obviously from a single Google search. It’s taken me a few hours to debunk or question most of the assertions in the pamphlet.
A) the vague promises with no guarantee: “Potential new bus link” from where to where how often who is operating it etc, etc.”We have assessed the potential impacts of traffic from the development on air quality. This has shown that the impact will not be significant” what does that mean how do we judge what they assessed is good enough for us?
B) Over optimism especially on the back page.
Let’s examine the Figures.
“340 jobs a year during construction”
Really.. When was the last time you saw more than 40 people on a major construction site? A quick search of contractors shows that most of these sites have teams that do drainage and groundwork. Others erect steel frames, and then others do roofing. 340 people different tradesmen may well work there for short periods but the idea that a team of 340 people get a year’s employment is simply untrue.
Sticking with employment numbers, how are they calculated to get 4,100 jobs and 180 trainees? Without knowing the nature of the work, how can it be possible to predict? I have been in the last two years to Hermes in Warrington and ARCO in Hull. What I saw was a small number of staff using highly automated production lines that sorted orders and deliveries automatically. Human input was mostly checking and maintaining the automated systems.
The Hermes Warrington website claims it employs 60 people. Based on that figure I doubt if the whole site will employ more than 500 people in total. A very long way from being 4,100 jobs.
So, SIX56 explain these figures and how you worked them out
Next, by carefully trying to make the jobs created sound hi tech they have come up with an average salary of £28,000; £4,000 more than the average for Warrington. Seeing these are un-built units without knowing what kind of work is going on, how can this claim be made? A quick check of the employment agencies in Warrington will tell you a warehouse operative gets between £15,000 and £19,000; that is between £4,000 to £9,000 below the average wage in Warrington.
With the Stobarts application they were extolling their great record as employers. However, under questioning they had to admit that many of the people who actually worked for them were on temporary contracts and did not get the benefits that direct employees do. The reality is that modern warehousing and distribution employs a small number of people, many on short term contract and below the national wage. A scrutiny of Stobarts workforce showed that most employees didn’t come from Warrington and in fact drove in from outside the borough.
Recruiting: Warrington Borough Council was stunned to receive 4,500 objections to its Preferred Development Option (PDO). At every turn they have misjudged the people of Warrington. We have some very active people, some who bring expertise in particular areas, some great wisdom about the historic settlements and some bring Canary Costumes.
What we need now is many more of those people. Lord Prescott (who I don’t like) had one very successful campaign and it’s one we can all benefit from. It’s asking each person to recruit others. It’s surprising how many people whose lives will be very deeply affected by SIX56 and the resulting fallout have absolutely no idea about it. We need to reach those people so we should all aim to recruit between 3 and 5 people. We need to get them to look at this website, the facebook pages and keep them in the loop. When we get a chance to object to the plan if we can get over 10,000 well crafted objections it puts the Council in real trouble.
If Stobarts and SIX56 go through we will face the complete implosion of our existing green belt. If we can defeat Stobarts and Six56 we can really start to defeat the whole plan. We need to get out and fight this tooth and nail.