Residents called on to help meet ambitious house building target

Council calls on public to help meet ambitious house building target

Residents are being invited to nominate sites for potential development to help the council meet its target of building nearly 6,000 new homes by 2028.

The council has committed to allocating enough land to enable the construction of at least 460 new homes a year between 2012 and 2028, as part of a major planning document, the core strategy. This local plan, agreed by the government in 2016, also outlines the creation of 210 hectares of new employment land during the same period.

As part of a new public consultation, which gets under way this week, the council is calling on members of the public to nominate land which they would like to see taken into consideration for development to meet this required level of growth.

The council is keen to identify additional brownfield sites, such as places which have been used for employment in the past, or sites in built-up areas, to meet future housing needs.

This is separate to the Greater Manchester Spatial Framework, which is a longer-term plan looking at much larger scale employment opportunities and house building across Greater Manchester. The Greater Manchester Spatial framework, which for Rochdale mainly focusses on sites along the M62 motorway, may require the release of some green belt, but green belt will not be looked at as part of the core strategy.

Councillor Daalat Ali, cabinet member for planning and development at Rochdale Borough Council, said: “With a growing population, it’s vital that we make best use of our land to create as many homes and employment opportunities as possible, while ensuring that we maintain our beautiful parks and stunning open spaces.

“Although we have identified lots of brownfield areas for potential redevelopment, there may be some small pockets of land which we are not aware of and we’d love to hear from our residents on this.”

Once an area has been nominated, the council will assess its suitability for development, with appropriate sites being put into a draft document, which will go out to public consultation at a future date.

Residents who would like to nominate a site can do so at:

www.rochdale.gov.uk/nominatesites

Nominations close on 14 August.