Planning Details

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The planning system can be a confusing mess. Here is an explanation of the situation at Danes Moss.

First of all, an unpleasant name. The project to develop 136 acres of Danes Moss is known as ‘The South Macclesfield Development Area’ or SMDA for short.

At the bottom of the page is a list of all the planning applications related to the SMDA.

To summarise:

The SMDA project on Danes Moss has had outline planning permission since January 2019. However, in order to go ahead, the developers (the council and whoever they are in bed with this week) need to get 10 reserved matters applications passed. This has not happened yet and is not guaranteed. There is no indication when the reserved matters will be considered for planning permission but the ambition of the council is to get them passed before the end of 2022.

Now more detail…

Because the plan is for more than 200 houses, one planning application is not enough and it must be considered by the council’s Strategic Planning Board. Additionally, once an Outline Planning Application has been approved there is still a lot of detail to examine. These details are dealt with in several Reserved Matters Planning Applications but we will deal with these later.

An original outline planning application was made in 2017 under the reference 17/1874M.
This application aimed to establish the principle of development on the SMDA site and was granted in January 2019.

The story of how this happened is interesting.

The 12 members of the Strategic Planning Board considered the outline application (17/1874M) at a meeting at Macclesfield Town Hall on the 30 August, 2017. Public speakers against the development were Cllr. Laura Jeuda (Labour, Macclesfield South) and Dr Rachel Giles from the Cheshire Wildlife Trust.

Dr Giles patiently explained the importance of the site – the numerous priority species that would be devastated by the development, the fact that the peatland could possibly be restored to a natural peat bog (it turns out that it can) and that this would put it into a habitat classification of International Importance. She also repeated the objection of the Trust that the plan would lead to a net-loss of biodiversity and was ‘one of the most environmentally damaging schemes in Cheshire East in recent years.’ Later, Cllr Toni Fox asked the council’s Principal Nature Conservation Officer (Mr James Baggaley) whether he agreed with the assessment of the Wildlife Trust. Mr Baggaley responded that, ‘…yes, I guess it probably is one of the more ecologically damaging plans that we’ve considered recently.’

Incredibly, even though the Cheshire Wildlife Trust owns the neighbouring Danes Moss SSSI, the council did not consult with the Wildlife Trust over the development plans – despite five submissions to the council from the Trust. A glaring omission. Was this a deliberate attempt by the council to exclude the voices of wildlife experts and some of the strongest criticisms of the SMDA project? Make up your own mind.

First, Cllr Toni Fox (no longer a councillor) proposed a motion to refuse planning permission. It was defeated 8-4.

Next, Cllr Mike Sewart (Con, Poynton West and Adlington) proposed a motion to delegate authority for approval to one council officer – the Head of Planning, Mr David Malcolm – with a recommendation that the plans be approved. The motion was carried 8 votes to 4.

So, who voted in favour of the motion to develop Danes Moss?

Cllr Steven Edgar (Conservative, Haslington) (Still sitting on the board)
Cllr Sarah Pochin (Conservative, now ‘non-grouped’, Bunbury)
Cllr Mike Sewart (Conservative, Poynton West and Adlington)
Cllr Lesley Smetham (Conservative, Gawsworth)
Cllr Liz Wardlaw (Conservative, Odd Rode)

Cllr Gill Merry (Conservative, no longer a councillor)
Cllr John Hammond (Conservative, no longer a councillor)
Cllr Derek Hough (Liberal Democrat, no longer a councillor)

And who voted against?

Cllr Steven Hogben (Labour, Crewe South) (Still sitting on the board)
Cllr Toni Fox (no longer a councillor)
Cllr Dennis Mahon (no longer a councillor)
Cllr Janet Jackson (no longer a councillor)

The board debated the ecological consequences of the plan and mentioned the importance of peat as a carbon store. It was also noted that the proposals were extremely ecologically damaging. Despite this Cllrs Mike Sewart and Sarah Pochin showed where their priorities lay during the debate.

Cllr Mike Sewart contradicted the view of the Cheshire Wildlife Trust by stating that ‘we’re getting a reasonable amount of environmental mitigation’ and thought that it would be more than worth it, stating ‘Let’s look on the positive side though. We’re getting improved access to the sports field. We’re getting…highway improvement… We’re getting 95 affordable houses and anybody that’s voting against it is denying 95 families some reasonable properties.’ Note: that’s 95 affordable homes out of 950.

Cllr Sarah Pochin declared that ‘we should absolutely support this application’ and that the development would be ‘on land that – in my opinion – has no aesthetic value. It’s scrubland.’

Clearly, Cllr Pochin was outspoken that day… but not about everything. Because Cllr Pochin failed – at any point – to declare the fact that she had been a director of ‘Engine of the North’, the company whose planning application she spoke in favour of that day.

Companies House website shows that from 1 June 2015 to 31 May 2016 Cllr Pochin was a non-executive director at Engine of the North, the company owned by Cheshire East Council. Her time as a director was quite pivotal for this application as it included Engine of the North successfully asking the council to approve a ‘Collaboration Agreement’ with a private developer to build on Danes Moss. This agreement was approved by the council on 16 May 2016 whilst Cllr Pochin was still a director at the company. So, why didn’t she declare an interest? For context, other members of the Strategic Planning Board did declare their interests although none of them had been company directors of the planning applicant like Cllr Pochin. Here is a what the other councillors declared as an interest:

Cllr Hammond: declared that he was a former director of ANSA Environmental Services Ltd, a council-owned company who were consultees on the application.

Cllr Hogben: as above.

Cllr Smetham: declared that she was a member of the Cheshire Wildlife Trust who opposed the application.

Cllr Merry (chair): stated she had received a briefing note from Engine of the North which all SPB members had received.

Cllr Wardlaw: stated that she was a Cabinet Portfolio holder for Health who had been consultees on the application.

Perhaps Cllr Pochin was simply so enamoured by the quality of the planning application that she forgot to declare an interest because after forgetting she went on to announce “This application, in principle, is well constructed in my view, comprehensive and well balanced. I would actually like to commend Engine of the North for their work on this.”

The recording of the meeting can be found here.

Land ownership

The site is 136 acres (or 55.05 hectares) and since 2017 about 53.6% of the land (c.29.54 hectares) has been owned by Cheshire East Council. Most of the remainder is now owned by Barratt Developments Plc – the largest house builder in the UK. Barratt bought the land in 2022 from a company registered in Jersey called TG Limited. This company was owned by Thomas Gallagher who is the brother of billionaire property developer Sir Tony Gallagher. The company number is 115004, registered with the Jersey Financial Services Commission.

Despite Barratt purchasing the TG land in 2022, TG Ltd remains as the joint applicant for planning permission on many of the reserved matters planning applications.

Tony Gallagher’s company, Gallagher Developments is still acting as the planning agent for Cheshire East Council and TG Ltd on the SMDA project.

Electoral Commission records reveal that Tony Gallagher has donated more than £4.1m to the Conservative Party. With donations to individual MPs he has been most generous to the former Minister of State for Housing and Planning, Brandon Lewis MP who received £49,014 in seven payments from 2017 – 2019.

These payments were only made after Brandon Lewis was no longer Housing Minister and had taken on new portfolios. What precisely was the point of all these donations? Was Sir Tony Gallagher so impressed by Brandon Lewis’ performance as Minister of Policing and the Fire Service that he could not resist donating £20,000 to his re-election campaign in 2017?

By comparison, Gallagher only gave one-off donations to other MPs and significantly less than he gave to Brandon Lewis – £10,000 was given to Boris Johnson and £8,000 to George Osbourne.

In 2016, Tony Gallagher hosted former Prime Minister David Cameron’s 50th birthday party at Sarsden House, his home in Chipping Norton.

In February 2022, The Sunday Times reported that Sir Tony Gallagher was part of a privileged group of Tory donors who, in return for a donation of at least £250,000 were made members of a ‘secret advisory board’ with direct access to the Prime Minister’s advisors. The report concludes: ‘None of the meetings appear to have been minuted or attended by civil servants, so there is unlikely to be any record of the advice or lobbying which took place.’

TG Ltd began buying land on Danes Moss in early 2014, eventually spending at least £22m. Some investments in TG Ltd activity came from overseas tax havens. A Gibraltar company called Spadea Holdings bought £5.8m in securities in TG Ltd which allowed investors to fund TG Ltd land purchases. These investors included Bluestar Enterprise Ltd, Walsingham Capital Ltd and the Panama-based Pegasus Star Holdings SA.

The Planning Applicants

The applicants for most of the planning applications for the SMDA project are TG Ltd and Engine of the North.

For Engine of the North, read Cheshire East Council. Engine of the North was incorporated in 2013 and is a company wholly owned by the Council. A decision was made to wind down the company in January 2019. This has still not happened although the council used to claim that the company was dormant and since 2019 have said they intend to close the company “in the next 12 months”.

So, if Engine of the North is no longer driving the SMDA project on behalf of the council, who is?

According to the council’s own website, “The Economic Development service has a role in leading economic development and regeneration and is the facilitator of the SMDA project”

The council officers who are involved are Peter Skates, the Director of Growth and Enterprise with occasional help from Charles Jarvis, Head of Economic Development and Brendan Flanagan, Head of Rural and Cultural Economy. Whether there is anyone on this team with an expertise or basic understanding of ecology, climate change, nature – in other words ‘the real world’ – is not at all clear.

Judging by the statements from the council, the project is being driven from a purely short-term financial perspective that ignores and contradicts the council’s supposed priorities on the environment.

Does Cheshire East Council really care about nature and climate change?

At the time that the South Macclesfield Development Area project was devised (2013 – 2016) and up until the last local election in 2019, the reputation of Cheshire East Council was not good. Corruption and a bullying culture were well documented and resulted in seven seperate police investigations into the council as well as internal reviews.

Air quality manipulation

Perhaps most scandalous was the revelation in 2017 that the council had been caught manipulating air quality data for several years.

External auditors Bureau Veritas stated that there was clear evidence of ‘deliberate and systematic manipulation of the data’ across one third of all the council’s air quality monitoring tubes which record nitrous oxide levels. The falsification was taking place across Cheshire East and involved huge data sets from 2011 – 2014. It seems improbable that a single rogue employee was doing this alone. And here the mystery deepens. Cheshire Constabulary opened a criminal investigation into the affair but closed it with no further action in December 2021. And the Council have refused to give any information about who was responsible. Consequently, we have no idea who was manipulating the data and whether they (plural) are still working at the council. Was it a group of council officers? Were councillors involved? Was the planning department implicated? Was the issue an open secret in some quarters of the council? Were the culprits even discovered? Is there a persisting culture of dishonesty and ignorance in the council around environmental matters? We have our suspicions.

Justifying the unjustifiable

More recently, Cheshire East Council revealed its true institutional attitude to the excavation of an old peat bog in Henbury to make way for Bellway’s housing development on Chelford Road.

Bellway (a company once given the highest ever fine for wildlife crime in the UK) are currently engaged in the excavation of 15,600 cubic metres of peat which is being used to create garden soil and infill as well as over 6000 cubic metres being removed from the site and dumped elsewhere. This will create huge CO2 emissions.

In January 2022, Nub News journalist, Alex Greensmith, pointed out the contradiction between the council allowing this to happen and their stated environmental ambitions. In response, a council spokesperson said, ‘whilst any removal of peat is regrettable in terms of environmental sustainability, this must be balanced against the economic and social benefits of a proposed development.’

If Cheshire East Council believe that the destruction of our biggest carbon stores can be balanced against ‘economic and social benefits’ can we really take them seriously? Are they with us in the struggle to protect nature and a liveable climate? Or are they on the side of business-as-usual offering us a cup of greenwash Kool-Aid?

Planning Applications List

List of all planning applications related to the SMDA site from 2017 to present.

1 outline permission
1 non-material amendment
10 reserved matters applications.

17/1874M (OUTLINE APPLICATION)

[GRANTED Jan 2019]
Demolition of existing structures and redevelopment of site including up to 950 homes; a one form entry primary school (use class D1), retail development (use class A1) of up to 4000sqm; employment floorspace comprising offices (use class B1a) of up to 500sqm and warehousing (use class B8) up to 10,000 sqm or relocation of existing demolition / reclamation yard operational facilities (sui generis); associated landscaping, roads and related works – outline application, all matters reserved except site accesses from Congleton Road, Moss Lane and Moss Lane/Star Lane.

19/1796M (RESERVED MATTERS APPLICATION)

Phase 1 primary infrastructure works comprising of enabling works, new highways, footpaths/cycleways, public open spaces, ecology areas and associated hard and soft landscaping, drainage and servicing works pursuant to outline planning permission 17/1874M.

21/5940M (NON-MATERIAL MINOR AMENDMENT)

[GRANTED Dec 2021]

21/6421M (RESERVED MATTERS APPLICATION)

Details of access, appearance, landscaping, layout and scale for Phase 7 – 325 dwellings (Use Class C3) pursuant to outline planning permission 17/1874M.

21/6430M (RESERVED MATTERS APPLICATION)

Details of access, appearance, landscaping, layout and scale for Phase 10 – relocation of existing demolition / reclamation yard operational facilities (Use Class Sui Generis) pursuant to outline planning permission 17/1874M.

21/6429M (RESERVED MATTERS APPLICATION)

Details of access, appearance, landscaping, layout and scale for Phase 9 – relocation of existing demolition / reclamation yard operational facilities (Use Class Sui Generis) pursuant to outline planning permission 17/1874M.

21/6428M (RESERVED MATTERS APPLICATION)

Details of access, appearance, landscaping, layout and scale for Phase 6 – 146 dwellings (Use Class C3) pursuant to outline planning permission 17/1874M.

21/6427M (RESERVED MATTERS APPLICATION)

Details of access, appearance, landscaping, layout and scale for Phase 5 – a one form entry Primary School (1,300 sqm – Use Class D1) pursuant to outline planning permission 17/1874M.

21/6422M (RESERVED MATTERS APPLICATION)

Details of access, appearance, landscaping, layout and scale for Phase 8 – 179 dwellings (Use Class C3) pursuant to outline planning permission 17/1874M.

22/0054M (RESERVED MATTERS APPLICATION)

Details of access, appearance, landscaping, layout and scale for Phase 3 – 120 dwellings (Use Class C3) pursuant to Outline planning permission 17/1874M.

22/0036M (RESERVED MATTERS APPLICATION)

Details of access, appearance, landscaping, layout and scale for Phase 4 – 180 dwellings (Use Class C3) pursuant to outline planning submission 17/1874M.

22/0030M (RESERVED MATTERS APPLICATION)

Details of access, appearance, landscaping, layout and scale for Phase 2 – 4,000sq m of retail (Use Class A1) pursuant to outline planning submission 17/1874M.

References

TG Ltd. Company number 115004. Registered with Jersey Financial Services Commission on 17 Feb 2014. Sources: Special Resolution (2014) and Company Accounts (2015 – 2020).

Cheshire East Council (2022) ‘Freedom of Information Request Internal Review no. 14404186: Request for clarification of CEC’s ownership of land in the South Macclesfield Development Area’

Cheshire East Council (2022) ‘Council responds to concerns about South Macclesfield scheme‘ Cheshire East Council (2022) Available here: https://www.cheshireeast.gov.uk/council_and_democracy/council_information/media_hub/media_releases/council-responds-to-concerns-about-south-macclesfield-scheme.aspx?fbclid=IwAR0wfVqcZ-FP15uOKknc9QGN34TSG_ORZa4oOquHtVbv-DGSay-qHldTZFk

Daily Mail (2016) ‘Cameron celebrates his 50th with ultra exclusive party’ Available here: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3827953/Cameron-celebrates-50th-ultra-exclusive-party-Just-23-guests-invited-Dave-s-low-key-birthday-albeit-26million-country-pile-owned-favourite-Tory-donor.html

Macclesfield Express (2016) ‘Council defends land deal with Jersey firm’ Available at: https://www.macclesfield-live.co.uk/news/local-news/council-defends-land-deal-jersey-11411642

The Sunday Times (2022) ‘The Tory donors with access to Boris Johnson’s top team
In return for a £250,000 donation to the Conservatives, multimillionaires are being ushered into the heart of government as part of a secret ‘advisory board’ Published on 19 Feb 2022.