Outline Planning Permission Granted
The MAN Energy Solutions planning application for outline planning permission for the construction of up to 200 homes on the ‘big field’ of Mirrlees Fields was approved at appeal in January 2024.
Access will be from Bramhall Moor Lane, via Mirrlees Drive, with gated, emergency access from Flowery Field. This agreement will preserve the Mirrlees Oak tree in the middle of the big field and all public rights of way across the field.
The developer will be Kellen Homes.
MAN included in their application a number of offers that would, in their view, provide benefits to the Council:
- Gift the remaining, majority, of the Fields to a charitable organisation, the Land Trust, who would own, manage and maintain the Fields as informal publicly accessible open space for the local community to enjoy. A £1.27million endowment from MAN would provide the finances to allow the Fields to remain a well-managed open space in perpetuity, safeguarding the future of the fields as a community asset for ever.
- £2.1m contribution to the Council to ensure school local schools could accommodate additional children that might move to the new houses.
- Just over £200,000 to completely fund three Stockport Council ‘Climate Action Now’ projects in the local Stepping Hill Committee area.
- 50% of the homes on the development were designated as affordable, using a recognised definition.
- A work and skills agreement to ensure job opportunities created as a result of the development would benefit local people.
- A financial contribution to provide recreation and amenity open space within the development itself.
These benefits, in the view of the impartial and independent planning team within the Council, outweighed the harm from the development and the Officer’s recommendation was to approve the planning application.
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Our position
The proposal provoked many differing views, some believing that it was a reasonable compromise, and others arguing that there should be no development at all. Mirrlees Fields Friends Group initially took the latter stance.
The fields were soon fenced off prior to the planning application being submitted and the committee was forced to rethink. The prospect of MAN Energy selling the land on to developers without planning permission, to an unknown entity who would make no such promise to the community, and who might sit on the land until housing shortages led to policy changes.
Potentially leaving us with nothing at all was too great a risk, and the Friends Group decided that since there was no viable means of the public raising the funds to buy the land and the council was also unwilling to take it on, compromise was the only way to safeguard at least some of the land.