CPRE Lancashire and its West Lancashire District Group, with the support of some parish councils and local groups commissioned Piers Elias, an expert demographer who reviewed the proposed housing figures.  The CPRE response with the demographic appraisal report appended, evidenced how jobs growth and housing numbers were flawed and wrongly inflated. 

St. Helens Borough Local Plan 2020-2035 Submission Draft (“the Local Plan”) and supporting documents were published under Regulation 19 of the above-mentioned Regulations on 17 January 2019. This article outlines how to have your say on the consultation.

CPRE Lancashire hopes that the St Helens Local Plan will progress towards adoption without delay, as in our experience, greenfield land in the countryside, particularly Green Belt, is more vulnerable to development without the protection of an up to date, and adopted local plan, steering development to the most sustainable locations. However, we do have a number of comments, and encourage our members to read CPRE’s response to inform their own if not already submitted.

We hope that enough needed jobs and houses are planned and built. But frankly, when we read the Council’s Preferred Option document that proposes a brand new local plan up to 2050, for more than 15,000 homes and 190 hectares of employment land to be developed primarily on prime farmland in the Green Belt, we were aghast.