PLANS to build a “monstrous” logistics and manufacturing development in green belt land in Haydock have been rejected by St Helens Council.

The proposals for the Haydock Point site, which is to the North East of Junction 23 of the M6 Motorway, will ultimately be decided by the Secretary of State as part of public inquiry scheduled for February 2021.

But on Tuesday, St Helens Borough Council’s planning committee determined on the application to set out the authority’s stance ahead of the inquiry.

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The application sought outline planning permission to build two warehouses totalling around 1.8 million square feet of employment space on 42 hectares of open farmland, mainly to be used for logistics with up to 20 per cent for general use, including manufacturing.

The council said the reason it has taken so long to deal with the application, which was submitted in March 2017, is primarily due to the adequacy of the transport assessment.

Subsequently, the applicant, Peel L&P, lodged an appeal with the Secretary of State on the grounds of non-determination of the application.

This was after the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government ‘called-in’ a number of logistics and distribution employment schemes in the region, including Parkside, in May 2020.

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Speaking on Tuesday, Melanie Hale, the council’s service manager for development and building control, insisted the application could not have been dealt with any sooner.

Andrew Bickerdyke, director of planning at Turley, spoke at the meeting on behalf of the applicant, where he said the proposals represented a £160 million investment in the borough.

Mr Bickerdyke said the scheme, which has no end user, will provide approximately 2,500 jobs once fully operational, and around 265 construction jobs.

The planning consultant said it will provide a £62 million uplift to the St Helens economy and £159 million to the wider North West economy, and bring in £3.5 million in business rates per annum.

Mr Bickerdyke said: “Increasing the region’s logistics and manufacturing capacity is a vital step in levelling up the UK economy.

“The North must take control of making this happen through providing the infrastructure which businesses need to locate and operate in the North.

“Further, the current pandemic has only increased demand for space in the logistics sector, with home delivery of goods being a lifeline for many and enabling businesses to continue trading with their customer base.

“Brexit will place a further demand on the logistics sector, with Northern ports needed to take the strain placed on the existing main entry points into the UK from Europe.

“In combination, this will see demand for large scale logistics and manufacturing spaces in the region continue to grow year on year, with precious little supply to meet live and forecast demand.”

Mr Bickerdyke said St Helens is “well placed” to capitalise on the growth in the logistics sector.

He added that St Helens also has a “significant employment need” to marry up with this opportunity.

“All of this has been recognised by the council in approving other recent schemes, and the council is putting its weight behind this sector,” Mr Bickerdyke said.

“The scale of market demand is significant and far greater than the cumulative scale of development supported by this council to date.

“The combined benefits of the current and forecast growth in this sector are up for grabs, and can be secured in the borough through the development of the right sites in the right locations.”

Two illustrative masterplans submitted with the application show how the site could be developed, and show how the maximum floor space could be provided across three units.

To mitigate some of the harm caused by the development, a number of benefits would be secured via a section 106 agreement.

These include improvement works at Junction 23 of M6 and £1 million to fund a shuttle bus service that will link to Newton, Earlestown and St Helens railway stations as well as St Helens bus station to the site.

A contribution of £25,000 has also been proposed to mitigate the impacts on residents resulting from the use and parking of HGVs.

Despite the benefits, Haydock Labour councillor Anthony Burns, cabinet member for public health, leisure, libraries and heritage, said he could not support the application as the significant harm on the landscape is too great.

Green Party Haydock councillor David van der Burg also urged the committee to reject the plans.

He highlighted the anti-social behaviour around Haydock Industrial Estate, saying lorry drivers have left hundreds of bottles of urine and bags of faeces.

Cllr van der Burg said another “enormous warehouse” in Haydock would inevitably lead to thousands of extra HGVs without adequate facilities, leading to more anti-social behaviour.

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Labour’s Dennis McDonnell said the proposals should be amended to reduce the scale and set further away from the A580 and Haydock Park Racecourse.

Cllr McDonnell said: “The application represents overdevelopment of the site.

“It is monstrous, causing significant harm to the green belt. The application is certainly over the top.”

Newton Labour councillor Seve Gomez-Aspron, deputy leader of the council, welcomed the benefits of the scheme, but questioned whether it really was the “right site in the right location”.

Cllr Gomez-Aspron said: “I accept that the jobs are great and the infrastructure investment is great, and investing in a bus service to Earlestown and Newton-le-Willows and St Helens is exactly what I want to hear from these type of developments.

“But I can’t reconcile that against the size of this development and the impact that that would have on the surrounding environment.”

Councillors were told that, in the views of planning officers, very special circumstances outweighed the harm to the green belt and any other harm.

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They recommended that, had the council remained as the determining authority, planning permission be granted subject to conditions and the s106 agreement.

However, Cllr Gomez-Aspron proposed a motion to refuse the application on the grounds that the development gives rise to landscape and visual harm, and causes harm to the character of the surrounding area, outweighing any benefits of the scheme and thus meaning special circumstances are not met.

Cllr Gomez-Aspron’s motion was unanimously approved by the committee.