We had an unusual request to Cheadle Area Committee on Tuesday.

The owners of 10 Priest Avenue, Gatley have asked to lease a pond on the edge of Scholes Park from the Council. They had previously fenced the pond (which is a small pond within a copse on the edge of the field - see map below) without permission and are seeking to make the arrangement formal.

Some local residents are concerned about this. The Council officers have produced a report going through the details and recommending that an annual tenancy be granted.

Rather than make the decision on the night, we decided to give local residents more opportunity to put their opinions. The matter will be advertised both in Priest Avenue and in Scholes Park, and will come back to Cheadle Area Commitee on Tuesday 12th October. Councillors can then make an informed decision.

Even if this is approved, the owner may still need to apply for planning permission for change of use.


(Note, the recommendation is missed off in this scane - it is to approve).

View Scholes Park in a larger map

The next Cheadle Area Committee will be held at Ladybridge Park Residents Club, Edenbridge Road, Cheadle Hulme starting at 6pm on Tuesday 22nd June 2010.  You can download the (unusually short at only 61 pages) agenda here.

As always, the meeting is not only open to the public, but we really want more people to come along.  You can turn up late if you like, and you can ask questions of the police, council and councillors (though where there’s no agenda item the question fits into, it needs to be submitted in advance - you can send it by email to stephen.fox@stockport.gov.uk if you like.

Tuesday’s agenda includes

• Brief presentation from Inspector Steve Gilbertson of West Stockport Area police and his colleagues, plus the opportunity to ask questions and raise issues directly with Steve and his team.
• Update from Julie Henshall, our Area Conditions Officer, who deals with issues like graffiti, fly-tipping and littering - you can ask Julie questions.
• Update from Rod Camblin from Highways - he’s the guy who goes around checking potholes and dodgy pavements, marking them up with orange paint and getting them fixed - you can ask Rod questions too.

Then we have the planning applications.  These are quasi-judicial, which means there are rules we follow and a set way things are done to ensure the outcome is fair.

This time round councillors will be considering:

• DC044007 - application for change of use of 9 Wilmslow Road, Cheadle from retail premises to class A3 (restaurant, snack bar and cafe use).  The recommendation from the planning people is to refuse this on the grounds that we already have too many of that type of premises in the area.
• DC044066/DC044125 - conversion and alteration of existing listed farm buildings to five dwellings on Ladybridge Farm, Ladybridge Road.  The planning officers are recommending we grant that one.
• DC044147 - single storey rear extension to 17 Oaktree Cottages, Anfield Road, Cheadle Hulme.  Officers are recommending we grant that one too.

In all cases with planning applications, councillors have (by law) to go into the meeting with an open mind and listen fairly to the arguments.  Our task is not to decide whether we fancy having the development, or whether its popular.  Our task is simply - again by law - to decide whether the development is within the rules and guidelines as set down in the Council’s Unitary Development Plan.

If we refuse an application, the developer can appeal and - if successful - the Council pays lots of money for the appeal costs and the development goes ahead anyway, so it’s worth getting it right.

Some good news.  I reported a while back that Parks and Recs had a cunning plan to get the money to repair the potholes on Gatley Hill (which isn’t a public highway so isn’t covered by normal pothole repairs to the roads).

The idea was that the people who are repairing the bridge over Gatley Brook would pay Parks & Recs a fee to keep their vehicles on Gatley Hill and that could be used to repair the potholes.

I’ve just got back from Cubs, where I saw the potholes mostly fixed, including the big trenches near the car park.  Good to see it sorted.

The swings have been removed at the Gatley Recreation Ground.

Unfortunately, it seems they were getting regularly broken - I’m told at least in part by someone using them to train a pit bull (quite how that works, I don’t know).

Every time the swings get broken, replacing them costs money so, for now, it’s been decided to leave them out of action.

Hopefully this can be revisited in the spring.

I’m back home after a couple of hours driving around Cheadle & Gatley to see how conditions are.  I made a point of visiting residential roads and spoke to quite a few people on the way.

Summary

• All the main roads are clear and, with light traffic, perfectly fine to drive down.  That includes Gatley Road, Altrincham Road, Park Road, Styal Road, Church Road, Kingsway, Cheadle High Street, Stockport Road, Manchester Road, Wilmslow Road, Delemere Road, Silverdale Road and Schools Hill.
• The bus services are running, with some delays.
• Metrolink in Manchester is running a slightly reduced service.
• At least some train services are running, but check before travelling.
• The pavements are mostly fine to walk on, with the snow still being powerdery (or cleared away in village centres).  Some, like Old Hall Road in Gatley, are getting a bit slippery so walk in the road.
• Nearly all the residential roads I visited (and it was quite a lot) are passable with care in a car.  The onlyserious  problems are on smaller residential roads with significant hills, such as Airedale Close in Cheadle.
• I’m really pleased to see that snow has been cleared from several of the hillier resedential roads including the hills on Kendal Drive, Rydal Close, Grasmere Road and Keswick Avenue.
• Refuse collections are going ahead on the larger roads, but not on smaller  residential roads.
• Recycling collections have been cancelled for today.

In a bit more detail

The roads I’ve driven or walked along today include in Cheadle:

Richmond Hill Road, Wensley Road, Marchbank Drive, Wensleydale Avenue, Airedale Close, Aysgarth Avenue, Oak Road, Oakfield Avenue, Brookfield Road, Broadway, Barcheston Road, Daylesford Road, Schools Hill, Grange Park Road, Brackenwood Drive, Mary Street, Lime Grove, Hall Street, Church Street,

In Gatley:

Firs Road, Linksway, Elm Road, Cedar Road, Burnside Road, Beech Avenue, Brookdale Road, Dingle Grove, Lorna Grove, Old Hall Road, Pendlebury Road, Frances Avenue, Springfield Road, Foxland Road, Delemere Road,Appleby Road, Gainford Avenue, Borrowdale Road, Ennerdale Drive, Kendal Drive, Eskdale, Langdale Close, Cartmel Close and St Anns Road North.

I’m happy the Council has cleared all the main roads and is doing a good job on the pavements in central areas.  I’m very pleased that many (though not all) of the steeper slopes on residential roads have been cleared.

All the grit bins I’ve checked have been empty, which is a concern I’ll be speaking to the Council about.  There are a few roads with significant slopes which could do with special attention too.

GMPTE Public Transport Information Alert

Please note this information was posted on GMPTE’s website at 0830.
6 January 2010

Severe weather update (0830)

GMPTE is advising passengers to expect further disruptions to bus and tram services today due to the ongoing severe weather conditions.

Passengers should allow extra time for journeys and use main roads to access bus services.
A list of current known service information is available below. Passengers are also advised to check www.stagecoachbus.com and www.firstgroup.com for service updates.

All Metrolink services are running to Piccadilly every 12 minutes. Passengers are advised to check www.metrolink.co.uk for the latest service information.

Rail passengers are advised to check www.nationalrail.co.uk for service updates before travelling.

For the latest advice from Greater Manchester Police, log on to www.gmp.police.uk.

Yesterday I went on a walkbout around Gatley (not the whole village - there’s only so much you can cover in 90 minutes!).  It was with our new Area Conditions Officer Julie Henshall and Richard Daniels, also from Environmental Services at Stockport Council - I’m grateful to both of them for coming out with me.

Here are some of the things we identified for action:

• Bags of rubbish dumped by station car park - Environmental Services will be tracing the owners.
• Poor state of land around electricity substation -vegetation needs tidying.  It should be United Utilities’ responsibility.
• Concrete bollard by station underpass broken, needs repair
• Poor state of path along the back of the station car park - always gets muddy.
• Litter is starting to build up around Gatley Station again, so we need Network Rail to clear up inside the railings and the Council to clear up on the verges.
• The alleyway running down from the Station car park past the end of Brentwood Drive to Gatley Road is in poor condition.  The fence leans out dangerously in places and whole fence panels are missing in others.  Vegetation grows over the top of the path in several places, blocking light from some of the streetlamps. There’s also some graffiti on the panels and the lampposts.
• Although not too bad at the moment, we identified the area where the motorway slip road comes onto the South Park Road Estate as often troubled with litter, graffiti and overgrown vegetation.
• On Kingsway southbound where the motorway slip road meets the A34 there’s obviously been an accident, probably with a car coming through a bush on the slip and hitting the fence by the A34.  The bush is broken and the metal fence is, at one point ripped out of the ground.
• Along the east side of Kingsway north of Gatley Road there’s quite a bit of litter on banks, verges and parking bays.
• We took a look at litter around Kingsway High School.  Environmental Services do go into the school to do assemblies around littering and have been known to hand out £75 penalty notices when the warnings remain ignored.
• The state of the electricity substation at the end of Foxland Road (by Springfield) is poor, with litter strewn around the front area.  The Council will chase up United Utilities to get it cleaned.
• There’s a lot of litter on Network Rail land around the railway bridge at the end of Foxland Road, plus overgrown brambles on the north side.
• More litter along the path from Foxland to Hawthorn, which I’ve asked the Council to sort out.
• The streetlight outside the entrance to Gatley Primary’s nursery school is faulty.
• Some graffiti on signs at the Gatley Green entrance to the Recreation Ground (I was very pleased to see graffiti on the skateboard ramps and old pavillion has been cleaned off).
• Detritus on the land at the back of the Tatton needs to get cleaned away.
• Brown wheelie bin someone left in front of the Tatton to be cleared away.

The ViaMichelin route planner site has an interesting feature: it allows you to plan your route, anywhere in Europe, by bike or on foot in addition to driving.

I’ve been giving it a test drive, and it’s not bad - but far from perfect.

In my testing, the cycle route planner directs you down smaller roads when the route’s the more direct, as you’d expect.  It also picks up on at least some places where a bike can go and a car can’t, such as where two roads connect but bollards prevent cars passing through.

Essentially, it seems to pick the shortest route, avoiding motorways, and using these cut-throughs where it can.

What it doesn’t do, yet, is have any way to avoid routes unsuitable for less experienced cyclists.  For example, in planning a route from Gatley to Manchester, it has no hesitation in sending me up Kingsway and sending me round the junction by East Didsbury station in Parrs Wood (a particularly challenging junction when you’re cycling south out of Manchester).

It’s a good start, but I’d love to see an option that actively tried to avoid dual carriageways and complex junctions, and was aware of signed cycle routes and paths.

Two “in-progress” issues we mentioned in our latest Keeping in Touch leaflet are now being sorted, both on Oak Road.

At the junction with Stockport Road, the dip (which turns into a big puddle in wet weather - and I’ve almost forgotten there’s any other kind) is now fixed.

The area of land between the two sets of Honeycombe Cottages is being tidied up by the owner, after I asked the Council to track him down.

The Council is consulting on its walking and cycling strategies.

You can access, and comment on, both here.

The consultation runs to 14th December.  I’ve had a brief look through the cycling strategy and it seems pretty good, with an understanding that its about more than plastering the roads with cycle lanes.

However, as always there’s a big gap between having a strategy and making it reality.

Two Stockport parks are among the first in the country to be recognised as Accredited Country Parks by Natural England. Mersey Vale Nature Park and Reddish Vale Country Park are among the first four parks across the country to be given this accreditation from Natural England.

In order to achieve accreditation, parks must meet a range of strict criteria for essential services and facilities, high quality signage and disabled access. Parks must be at least ten hectares in size, free to enter and have a daily staff presence in order to put themselves forward. 

It was good to see work being done tidying the plants and trees on Gatley’s old cemetary, next to the medical centre on Old Hall Road.

I was glad the foliage growing across the pavement at the corner was cleared back, as I asked a little while ago.

The signpost in the cemetary, which is leaning badly,   still needs to be repaired and made safe - I’ll be chasing that up.

Meanwhile, having reported foliage growing onto the pavement space from the railway land over the road from the station, I was pleased a couple of days ago to get a call from Network Rail.  The guy I spoke to was on site and I was able to explain exactly where the problem was.

I’m running a series of posts to summarise over 400 pages of documents in way that helps those who live and work in Stockport Borough understand the issues we’re facing, the options we have and the Council proposals in how the Borough develops over the next 17 years.

This is the third post.  You can read my overview plus my piece on  the Accessibility Appraisal paper.  This one covers the Core Strategy DPD Preferred Options Consultation, which you can read in full, and comment on, here.

This time I’m trying to condense 140 pages into a few hundred words - wish me luck.

What issues is the strategy trying to tackle?

Although both the population of Stockport Borough and the amount of traffic has fallen slightly in the last few years, we don’t expect that to continue.   The Government is asking Stockport to provide 450 new dwellings (houses or flats) every year - that’s over 7,000 by 2026.

At the same time Stockport, like everywhere, has issues to tackle with how things are now.   We’re the third most polarised borough in the country with pockets of deprivation and much more affluent areas.  Our main roads are congested. Stockport Town Centre isn’t all it could be.  Lots of people live in the Borough and travel out for work, with lots more living outside and travelling in.  And, in common with most other areas, we have an aging population and a lack of affordable housing.

The general approach

So we expect to have thousands of new flats and houses, which means (over time), more shops, offices, schools, sport, leisure, culture and health facilities and cemetaries.  Where should they all go?

This was the subject of a previous consultation.  Different options were looked at and the conclusion was, in the main, to strengthen existing centres.  By far the most development is planned for Stockport Town Centre.  Another big chunk goes into the District Centres and the Large Local Centres, with a smaller amount elsewhere.

Stockport has 8 District Centres: Cheadle, Cheadle Hulme, Bramhall, Edgeley, Hazel Grove, Marple, Reddish and Romiley.  It has 10 Large Local Centres: Gatley, Heald Green, Moor Top, Heaton Moor, Shaw Road/Heaton Moor Road, Heaton Chapel, Davenport, Great Moor, North Reddish and Marple Bridge.

Housing

There’s more to this than just building lots of houses and flats.  How big should they be?  How expensive?  Where should they go?

The proposal in this strategy paper is

• a 50/50 split between houses and flats overall, with most flats going in the Town Centre (which will end up with a much higher population) and most houses going around the District and Large Local Centres.
• The majority of the flats to have two bedrooms.
• 40% of new housing to be affordable for those on lower incomes.
• 80% of new housing to be in existing buildings and previously developed land.
• More social rented housing for Bramhall, Cheadle Hulme, Cheadle, Edgeley, Davenport, Marple, Romiley and the Heatons.
• If Woodford Aerodrome becomes vacant, using it wholly or partially for housing is one of several options.
• Stockport currently has no formal Gypsy and Traveller pitches.  Following Government guidance, we are expected to create 35, plus another ten travelling showpeople pitches.  This should increase to 57 pitches in total by 2026 and they should be be in urban areas with good access to services.
• 50% of the new dwellings to be in the Central Housing Area, with up to 2,000 in the Town Centre (the Central Housing Area is the Town Centre plus some areas around it).
• A further 35% of new dwellings to be within walking distance of District and Large Local centres.
• 15% of dwellings to be built elsewhere.

Reducing the size of some struggling centres

Even in the recession, most of our District and Local Centres are doing OK, including Cheadle, Gatley, Bramhall and Heald Green.  Walk around them and you won’t see many empty units.

Some are suffering more, including Hazel Grove and Edgeley.  For these, one option is to reduce the size of the centres - for example, by turning retail units at the edges of the centres into residential properties.

For all centres, the paper also offers the option of limiting the number of hot food and fast food outlets either within a centre altogether or near to schools and play areas.

Cemetaries

It may not be something most of us give much thought to, but Stockport’s cemetaries will be full in 10-15 years.  Should we create new cemetaries (if so, where?) or re-use existing ones.

Strengthen District and Local Centres

The overall strategy is to maintain and enhance the Town Centre along with existing District and Local Centres.

Here, I confess, I don’t think the document is very clear (and, in one case, makes a fairly blatant mistake).  The section in question is 7.135 on page 70.  It refers to changes in planning policies.

The paper proposes  controlling the scale, clustering and mix of uses in Centres to meet local needs and enhance the viability of the Centres.  Great in principle, and fine if there are lots of retailers and developers with different schemes.  The problem comes when the commercial environment isn’t quite so strong.

You might want to have a retail outlet in a particular place, but if no retailers want to open there, your real choice might be something else (a take-away, for example) or nothing. It could well be that nothing - an empty unit - is the best choice in some cases, but we should be aware of the issue.

With that in mind, I’m not clear exactly what the paper’s proposing.

Outside Local and District Centres, the paper proposes that we permit a change of use from service to non-service (e.g. offices or residential) unless there’s a good reason not to, as part of the strategy to strengthen the Centres.

In Large Local Centres, the paper says we should restrict the size of new shops and leisure units (where not re-using an existing building) to a maximum of  500 square metres (and 250 square metres in other Local Centres).  For District Centres, the much higher limit of 25,000 square metres is proposed.  (I think incorrect wording results in this paragraph actually saying the opposite of this).

There’s also a sentence which, I think, suggests that a new small convenience store would not be permitted if other local retailers already provide the same services.

Requiring that new convenience shops meeting local needs (up to max 250 square metres) will only be allowed where there are no alternative sustainably accessible facilities.

Again, it not necessarily a problem; but I don’t understand why we’d want to single out convenience shops.  If we’re going to protect that one type of shop from competition, why not protect newsagents, cafes or hairdressers?

Building business

The plan identifies the need to build strong business centres around Stockport, and argues that this should be primarily achieved by enhancing and promoting the Town Centre for new office development.  That fits in with the principle of enhancing the Town Centre overall, and concentrates more traffic flows into the centre (which is the location best served by public transport and car parking).

In particular, the strategy is to attract ICT, digital, creative and new media companies into offices around the A6 south of the M60 - especially in the civic quarter.

There’s also strong office provision in some our District and Local Centres: Bramhall, Cheadle, Cheadle Hulme, Hazel Grove, Stepping Hill and Gatley.  These should be supported.

Heavier industry should have direct access to main access routes (e.g. motorways) without having to go through residential areas.  The Bredbury Industrial Area is given as an example of a location that fits the bill.

The report says that there’s no specific need to find new areas of employment close to deprived areas: either they are there already, or there are good public transport links from those areas to the Town Centre.

Sport, green spaces and leisure

Stockport has an oversupply of senior sports pitches (compared to the Government recommendation for how many we should have) but slightly too few mini soccer facilities.

The report also identifies a shortfall of leisure facilities in the Town Centre, Hazel Grove, Reddish, Romiley and Edgeley, with too few sports halls (relative to the population) in the north and north east of the Borough.

There’s a discussion about our green spaces, both “formal open space” - parks and similar - and other green spaces.

Should we continue the current strategy of retaining a semi-rural character for our river valleys; or should we use that space to meet more formal needs, for example by building sports pitches there?

Overall, though the Cheadle area (Cheadle, Gatley, Heald Green and the northern part of Cheadle Hulme) was identified as having more than enough formal open space (again, compared to Government recommendations), the Borough as a whole falls 105 hectares short.  The Heatons also do well for green space, with Victoria, Tame Valley and Werneth needing improvement.

The plan rejects giving absolute protection to current green space.  It gives the example of the Cheadle Committee area, where there’s lots of formal green space and a shortage of affordable housing.  It suggests the option to swap some should be left open.

Transport

The strategy paper advocates more people living, working and playing in Stockport Town Centre along with our District and Local Centres.  If that’s going to be successful, we need to be able to get to and from those places.

Issues identified include:

• a lack of orbital train links from Stockport to Manchester Airport and Tameside
• a lack of train links between Stockport and some District Centres (Marple, Cheadle) and a general weakness in public transport between Marple and Stockport
• congestion across many of the Borough’s main roads

It notes that there are plans currently in place to improve transport provision, including SEMMMS, aiming to deliver the extended A555 Relief Road by 2016 and rail improvements scheduled to start from 2014.

Other reports and plans are noted including the 2009-2015 Stockport Cycling Strategy,  the Greater Manchester Integration Transport Strategy (GMITS) and the South Pennines Integrated Transport Strategy (SPITS).

Beyond those (which I won’t cover here, but will do at some stage if I have the time), the paper comes up with a selection of ideas that fall some way short of firm proposals:

• we need to shift from single-occupancy car use to more car sharing, cycling,  walking and public transport.
• promote flexible working and home working
• introduce more 20mph zones in residential areas
• improve the network of walking and cycling routes, both direct (normally on-road) and off-road for recreational and less confident cyclists.

Disclaimer

In this post I’ve attempted to summarise Stockport Council’s Core Strategy Development Plan Document (DPD) consultation paper.  This is my own work; it is not an official Council or Liberal Democrat summary and I’d be frankly amazed if there weren’t significant omissions and mistakes.   Nothing in this summary should be taken as indicating either my or the Liberal Democrats’ support for, or agreement with, the strategy paper.

Most of the things I get involved with are pretty immediate.  Problems that need fixing as soon as possible, or at most issues like the Kingsway filter that might take a couple of years to sort out.

So thinking about how I see Stockport developing up to 2026 requires a bit of a shift in focus.

That’s the idea behind Stockport Council’s Core Strategy.  Some progress has been made on this and the latest stage is now open for consultation until 25th November.

The issues aren’t simple.

Like everywhere else in the country, Stockport needs to provide new housing (at least 450 dwellings a year - nearly 8,000 by 2026.  That’s a whole Cheadle & Gatley and a bit more besides (we have about 6,500 dwellings in the ward).

What should the mix of housing be?  Where should it be located?  How many flats?  How much social housing?

How do we build the economic future of the borough, providing jobs, education and training for current and future residents?

What needs to be done to attract more people into the Town Centre along with our local and district centres (Cheadle is a district centre, Gatley is a local centre).  How do we ensure not only vibrant retail centres but also the best access for all to leisure, culture, education, health, open space and other community facilities.

How do we protect our open spaces, greenbelt land and heritage?

Stockport is already congested, so how can we get everyone moving even with thousands of extra homes?  What mix of buses, trains, facilities for cyclists and pedestrians and, of course, private car travel is right?

For the next month, you can visit the Council’s consultation portal, read the documents, register online and submit comments.  You can also submit your comments by email to planning.policy@stockport.gov.uk.

The actual consultation documents are fairly involved - together there’s several hundred pages.

So, to get more people involved, I’m currently reading and summarising the different documents - hopefully in a way that draws out the key questions and issues.

First there’s the Accessibility Appraisal.  That document sets the scene - it’s more about defining the issues than coming up with solutions.  It looks at how easy or difficult it is for people to get to where they want to go - to access schools, shops, jobs, leisure and healthcare, for example.

Next is the Core Strategy Consulation, which looks forward over the next 17 years with proposals covering housing, jobs, green spaces, sport and leisure, transport and more.

The other three papers, which I haven’t summarised yet are:

• Core Strategy DPD: Preferred Options - Habitats Regulations Assessment Screening Report
• Core Strategy DPD: Preferred Options - Sustainability Appraisal Screening Report
• Core Strategy DPD: Preferred Options - Sustainability Appraisal Screening Report Annexes

I’m chasing the Council to get two streetlights on Gatley Hill repaired - the one outside Park Mount and the one by the car park.

Some other lights at the top, along the path past the Scout Hut, don’t belong to the Council.  There’s one owned by the Scouts (the base is physically in the Scout Hut grounds), then two owned by the Brethren chapel - both on the grass behind Gatley Hill House.

The Brethren lightd work fine and they turn them on when they need them, which seems fair enough.  The Scout’s light is not working but should be repaired soon.

Anyone familiar with Gatley Station will know there’s a patch of unused ground in the car park - land that you might think (well, I did) would be quite handy for some extra parking spaces.

I asked Council officers to look into it and had an email this morning saying that the land isn’t owned by Network Rail or the Council but by Electricity Northwest Ltd. We’re making further enquiries but clearly that makes the situation difficult.  At the very least, I’d like to see the owners maintain the land properly.

Stockport Council secured over a million pounds in Playbuilder funding, being spent on refurbishing 22 play areas across the borough, with equipment for 8-13 year olds.

Currently, Scholes Field has some fairly elderly and poorly-used play equipment in the south east corner (near to the paths to Borrowdale Avenue and Linksway).  The plan is to replace this with a new, improved play area in the year 2010-2011 and there’s £50,000 to do it.

Local people (including the likely users of the equipment) will be consulted both on the location of the play area and the equipment to go in it.

For example, we could look at keeping the play area where it is now, moving it nearer to the new pavillion or elsewhere on the field.

More on the Playbuilder scheme on the Stockport Council website.

We took the kids on a walk through Gatley and Cheadle today, and even without too much moaning - though the promise of chocolate cake in Costa probably helped.

We walked through Abney Park, then past Mill Lane Cemetary (where the kids stocked up with conkers), along Mill Lane past the Alex.  Then carrying on past the end of Mill Lane, we followed the path past Barnes Hospital, alongside the railway line and finally down South Park Road and back home.

Abney Hall, if Wikipedia is to believed, is where Agatha Christie wrote two of her stories and the basis for several of her fictional country houses.  The Hall was also Cheadle Town Hall from 1959 to 1974.

An item from Cheadle Village Partnership:

For some time, the Cheadle Green Focus Group have been looking at how to improve the Green and make it, once a again, more of a focal point for the village.  This has had full backing from the Area Committee (i.e. the local councillors).

There is now a detailed plan which  Cheadle residents are being consulted on.  Click on the thumbnail images for more details.

Yesterday I spent an hour on the meadowland area of Gatley Carrs.

The hay baling machine had broken so we went along to gather the mown hay the old fashioned way - with rakes and pitchforks (though the Stockport Council truck was a little more modern).

Thanks to everyone who came along to help.  A reminder of how many people spent their entire lives, 12 hours a day, six days a week, just a century or so ago.

I was very pleased to attend the official opening of the new pavillion on Scholes Field.  It’s a great resource that’s taken a lot of time and effort to bring about.

The pavillion includes a room that we hope will be available for booking by community and private groups - the details are still being worked out but we should have more information soon.

There are also three pairs of changing rooms (home and away), each with toilets and showers, plus kitchen, office and storage areas.

The running track on Scholes Field has fencing round it, but there’s still a problem with dogs being walked inside the area.  Dog mess causes a particular problem when the area’s used for athletics.

A sign will soon be put up on the gate politely asking dog walkers to keep their dogs away from the fenced area - hopefully that will do the trick.  I know most dog walkers are responsible and will observe the signs.

The other outstanding piece of work for the pavillion is having marked parking bays in the car park.  This should have been done, but if you visit the site, you’ll see right away that the current surface isn’t suitable for painting.

We may end up with painted bays over a properly bonded car park surface, or with studs to mark the bays, but this will be done one way or another.

I’ve been chasing up the Council about mowing the paths on Gatley Carrs - something that’s been delayed this year.

The latest news - from today - is that the Carrs should be mown next week.  It seems mowing equipment was stolen, putting things back a bit.

Opposite 124 Brookfield Road, Cheadle is a path leading to a recreation ground.  About 2m from the road is a “Warning” sign.  It’s currently dangerous - the post is I’ve loose and the sign could easily topple over and injure someone.  I’m told a motorbike collided with it a few weeks ago.

I’ve asked for the sign to be made safe.

Potholes reported:

1. A pothole in the centre of Firs Road, Gatley outside 6 Firs Road.

2. Several potholes near the top of Fairway, Gatley.

3. Pothole by kerb opposite 19 Linksway, Gatley

I’m also working on improving the passageway from Fairway to Scholes Field, improving the police presence around the area and getting nettles cleared away.