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Angry allotment holders challenge council’s plans to allow building on green land

  • Disley Parish Council approve plans to build houses on protected Greystones allotment land 
  • Allotment holders start petition against the council

Allotment owners are challenging Disley Parish Council after they gave approval for houses to be built on land used by allotment holders. 

Greystones allotment in Newtown, Disley is an established part of the community and has been going for over 60 years. 

Rebecca Horsman-Johnson, one of the allotment owners, started a change.org petition to save the allotment. 

She said: “If you take that away from us, we have nothing. That’s why we’re fighting for it.

“We are Newtown people and we want to keep what is ours and not be third-class citizens.”

On the Disley Parish Council’s website, the Cheshire East Local Plan from June 2019 states: “Disley Parish Council hosted a consultation meeting with Disley allotment holders on 14 September 2017 and subsequently sent a letter to all allotment holders on 18 September 2017 outlining the council’s proposed submission of the Greystones site in response to the ‘call for sites’.”

She claimed that at a meeting she attend, parish councillors were reluctant to answer her questions, saying: “Councillors do not answer these questions”. 

Rebecca and another allotment holder sent out leaflets out to make pthers aware of the plans, many of whom knew nothing about it. 

She said: “There’s something not quite right. It’s a registered allotment with the National Allotment Society and by law, they have to find land that is the same or better, but they’re not.”

Rebecca and fellow allotment holders are trying to find out whether the council have the right to grant permission for homes to be built on the site, and are in contact with The National Allotment Society.

In a resonse to theNorthern Quota, Disley Parish Council referred to  its updated local plan on its website, which states: “While the Parish Council is reluctant to see further large-scale housing development within the Disley and Newtown area, if more housing is a legal requirement of the Local Plan to 2030, the Council would want the opportunity to influence where this is located.

“Disley Parish Council submitted three areas of land in Parish Council ownership for potential housing use or for safeguarding for housing use within the Local Plan period to 2030 or beyond to 2045. All the sites submitted by developers and landowners, including the Parish Council, were located within the Green Belt except land at the Greystones Allotment site in Newtown.”