Wigan Council pass more houses for Standish

Today Wigan Council passed a planning application for another 150 houses on Rectory Lane, opposite the golf course. I know that I have mentioned numerous times about the traffic and other obvious issues with allowing these houses but now the Council has broken it's own policy. Here's how.

The Council's core strategy says to build 200 houses for the next 5 years in Standish. The Council have now passed 450 houses to be built and once passed the developers can build the following day, if they wanted. The Council argue that if they only pass 200 houses then if that developer falls short and can't not deliver then their plan would be out. So they have to allow more just to take up any slack. I see their argument to some degree but now the Council are passing applications for year 3.

So why is this going on? In my opinion and what I hear that after 300 houses have been built there will be to much houses and the market in Standish will be saturated so the developers are all trying to get in first.

What is interesting is the Labour Council, John Hilton, who previously has said he has worked with the developer on the Golf Course site says that the development in Standish is a good one, however he proposed to refuse 9 houses in Aspull near to where he lives. The reason is that these 9 houses would create a traffic issue. What and he thinks another 4000 cars in Standish won't? What a crazy mad man.

I do believe now that a legal challenge can be re-looked at on the grounds that the Council are breaking their own policy.  Also on a serious note is that the planning application today was for Himor which has Mr W Ainscough as their MD and he sits on a company board for Wigan Council. When I have asked what controls they put in place to safe guard any conflict of interest or potential conflict of interest, the Council say they put none in. That does seem strange to me that they have no controls or governance in place for this and I will be asking more on this relationship.