Stockport council to 'protect green belt' from development in major housing update

Stockport's green belt will be protected as the borough's transformation continues, town hall bosses have promised.

Dozens of developments are ongoing across the town, which will add around 4,000 new homes in the coming years built on brownfield sites.

Stockport left a Greater Manchester-wide housing plan, then called the Greater Manchester Spatial Framework, in December 2020 due to fears that it would turn too much green belt land into building sites.

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The scheme, which is now called Places for Everyone, aims to create new jobs and homes around the city region, with the nine other districts of Greater Manchester all signed up.

Stockport council has announced that it is creating its own local plan for housing which is due to be published next year.

Councillors from different political groups met this week to thrash out the details of the plan, which will decide where new homes could be built in future.

The move to create a Stockport housing plan has been delayed several times since 2022, while the council waited for an update to national planning laws from the government which was finally published at the end of last year.

But during a meeting this week about the local plan, Stockport's opposition councillors said it was concerning that the local authority was leaning so heavily on the town centre for new homes.

Councillor Colin MacAlister, who's responsible for housing in Stockport, said: "The new rules mean we can have a plan which does not build houses within the green belt to reach our housing need figure.

"We will protect the green belt and there will be no release of land within the green belt which will have housing building on it."

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