Input to the Electoral Review of UA

By the Local Government Boundary Commission for

July 2015

From: Philip Mart

Scope

I would have liked to address the whole of the borough in a proposal but I found that I felt I had insufficient local knowledge to do so in terms on recent community history. Instead I focus on the area generally to the West of Sankey Brook and North of the .

Context

Almost all of the area considered was before 1974 in the Warrington Rural District. It is therefore now in the Parishes of or and Westbrook. The renaming of Burtonwood occurred when parish wards were amended following an unsuccessful application which I presented on behalf of Warrington North Conservatives to create a Westbrook parish in 1996.

The old villages of , Great Sankey and Burtonwood form only a small part of the areas, which will be fully developed by 2030. The largest part of the new development was planned by the Warrington and Development Commission and the area to the West of the Sankey Brook (hence the general term Westbrook) was planned by them. One of the constraints at the time of their master plan was that some of the former RAF Burtonwood and Domvilles Farm was not land which they owned. Additionally the Lingley Green estate which replaced an old isolation hospital was built outside the master plan of the WRDC. The New Town plans were a very successful mixing together of residential and employment land uses and, when scaled down, form the basis of the concept of urban villages. The big difference was that the scale was bigger for WRDC being four parts of Warrington, Westbrook, , Bridgewater and Cinnamon Brow/Padgate. The work done by the Commission included adding filling developments as seen at Longbarn and Hood Manor where there were clear bounded areas. The main development was of former MOD facilities : RAF Burton wood (Westbrook), the training camp at RAF Padgate (Cinnamon Brow), RNAS Stretton (Bridgewater) and the Royal Ordnance Depot at Risley (Birchwood). The plan for re-developing these areas included provision of shops and schools which established the community patterns for these and surrounding areas. The development of new boundaries for wards should take the utmost account of these plans in establishing boundaries as these are historic and well understood boundaries in the memory of most people who live here.

Turning back to Westbrook, the order of development was determined partly by settlement of mine workings from the former Bold Colliery but mainly by the construction of a complete new distributor road network including Cromwell Avenue, Lingley Green Avenue and Westbrook Way. The development of Chapelford was a later MOD led project but had to fit in with the New Town plans.

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New Town planned areas.

Great Sankey and Hood Manor The map below is based on a New Town progress report from 1988. The shaded areas were complete by 1988 and were started much earlier in the east with the areas not marked as HM being ready by 1978 complete with shops and school as well as community meeting rooms. The railway line was taken as an impermeable boundary for the planning of facilities and at the time the area shaded in light blue was base accommodation for RAF Burtonwood. That base accommodation has now been replaced by private housing but still relies on the Great Sankey/Hood Manor facilities for community purposes. The area is actually cut off by the dual carriageway element of Liverpool road and has no easy access to the area east of Whittle Avenue. It does however have a dependency on the shops and other facilities on Liverpool Road and is closer to Penketh High School than Great Sankey High.

The green lines are current polling district boundaries, S-JD to the east and S-JA to the west; both being part of Great Sankey North. This alignment should continue as it aligns with the planned intent.

Whittle Hall The next map shows Whittle Hall development, from which the current ward takes its name. This was an isolated New Town development designed to be rather dependent on car usage with community centre but for everything else such shops, schools and pubs etc. it was dependent on the surrounding areas. Those surrounding areas did not include Chapelford which was not planned but pedestrian access to Shops on Barrow Hall Lane and Station Road Great Sankey were provided.

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Access to the railway station at Great Sankey was also available on foot. The New Town design was for Whittle to be part of Great Sankey North.

Just before the public hearing about a Westbrook parish, more details in the appendix, a Great Sankey North residents association was formed to oppose the plan. The reason was that it was claimed that a Westbook parish should include Whittle Hall. There only ever seems to have been one member of the Association active and at least later she was employed by the council. The Parish councils wish to prevent losing their precepts to New Town areas was won. After that the Residents Association seemed to form a notional consultee but I have never met anyone who attended a meeting

The suggestion that Whittle Hall was ever anything other than a Part of Great Sankey is very weak current Whittle Hall ward. There are those who may argue that the 13 bus service links it with Hood Manor. The area was designed for access by car and the bus routes are transitory based on subsidies at the moment so the bus links do not change the underlying dependency on and linkage to Great Sankey.

Old Hall The houses in Old Hall were sold using publicity material that included the map below. At the time the plans for Old Hall seem to include what is now the Westbrook Centre but the development parcel map tells a slightly different tale in that it shows some of the westerly housing is intended to be Westbrook.

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However the reason for including the map is that it shows where the Old Hall Community was intended to be and that was on both sides of Cromwell Avenue. The Community facilities were built on the east of Cromwell Avenue but are intended to support housing on both sides of the road.

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The following map shows the development parcels but still needs explanation.

The areas numbers other than OH81/82 and OH901-OH906 were designed from the outset to be served by the community facilities on Twenty Acre Road. Although designed at the same time OH81/82 and OH901-OH906 were built as dependent on facilities at the Westbrook District Centre which was not built until rather later. Camp Road was turned into a foot path along the north of the RAF base and is used as the boundary between Westbrook ward and Whittle Hall ward today. Camp Road extended along the northernmost part of Twenty Acre Road and into what is now Shackleton Close by the entrance to Gulliver’s World. It is the logical boundary between Old Hall and Westbrook.

The request for a Parish council also asked for the unfathomable boundary which still exists to be removed. It has gone through a parliamentary review and district reviews because the reviews were in an inconvenient order. This time with the hope of a district review, which can change parish boundaries and a possible parliamentary review perhaps we can fix the boundaries which follow a covered over field drain. They should be moved so the residents finally now what ward and constituency then live in, they have waited too long.

Westbrook Westbrook itself is the development parcels marked as WB on the map above as well as the adjacent OH8X areas. The area around Ladywood road has a split personality where its older residents will say they live at Old Hall but their facilities are all based in the Westbrook Centre.

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Kingswood Kingswood was designed from the outset to be completely dependent on facilities at the Westbrook District Centre. It was later given a Community Centre by the Commission for the New Towns but essentially it remains a part of Westbrook for shops, school and other facilities.

Callands

Callands is straightforward with those areas marked CA on the map above being designed to be served from a school, shops and community centre shown by the black triangle on Callands Road. There was intended to be a Northern Expressway from the roundabout to the north of Asda which forms a clear southern boundary for Callands and there are only foot accesses via what is now a Greenway between there and Old Hall.

The dominant bus service is the 18, sometimes 17, which goes from Callands via the length of Twenty Acre Road in Old Hall toward Warrington.

The remaining newly built areas were not part of the New Town Plan.

New build but not New Town areas Domville’s Farm and Chapelford are adjacent and connected for pedestrians but not vehicular traffic whilst Lingley Green is remote and designed by WBC as a new part of Great Sankey. In the following map the area which was Domville’s Farm is shown shaded green. It has no road links other that via Lingley Green Avenue by the Thatched Cottage (part of the development) and close to Westwood Telephone Exchange. Pedestrian Access is via Westbrook by crossing Burtonwood Road which is a

7 no-through road. The area has no facilities at all and is dependent on the Westbrook Centre for shops and school. There is access to Chapelford on foot via Burtonwood road and those facilities are now as close as Westbrook.

Chapelford was supposedly designed by MOD/WBC/David Wilson Homes to be an Urban Village. Unfortunately it lacks the key characteristics of an Urban Village which are regular public transport to many places and a mixture of Residential and Business land use. It is however relatively self- contained when compared to the rest of Westbrook with its own shops school and soon to be built Health Centre and possibly a community facility. There are footpath links via Westbrook to the Westbrook Centre and the bus services go to the Westbrook Centre after passing through the estate.

Its position north of the railway limits any connection to Great Sankey other than at the southernmost end, where the Sankey Green Farm estate was built before the rest of Chapelford was planned. However it is included here because it shares both road and foot access from the south with Chapelford itself and uses the same school. The School was at Sycamore Lane but was moved to Chapelford because of falling rolls and subsequently made much larger to meet demand from Chapelford.

The links to Old Hall are not strong other than to catch the 18 bus services at the eastern edge of Chapelford. There is no justification to require that Chapelford is in the same ward as any part of the traditional Old Hall area as they share no facilities on which they depend or community of interest. In places the old wall of the Home Office Signalling and Telecoms Store between Chapelford and Old Hall still stands, expressing quite clearly the degree of separation that still exists.

Lingley Green

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Out at the western edge and with no facilities so depended on Great Sankey for all services other than a shopping bus service to the Westbrook District Centre.

There is also a new development off Liverpool Road at which as usual since the loss of the New Town was built with no facilities at all. This falls in the unparished area and has no affinity with other parts of the area discussed above. Future developments following the proposed high level Ship Canal crossing may change its relationships significantly but for now it is a car bound community with some facilities in Sankey Bridges which are outside the currently discussed wards, being east of Sankey Brook.

Older Areas Penketh and the other areas should mostly be unaltered save for abandoning the use of the brook at the back of Penketh High School as the boundary between Penketh and Great Sankey. The boundary should change to align with the main roads to give greater clarity to residents in the area between St Mary’s Road and Stocks Lane.

Proposals

New proposals are difficult without access to the electoral register for detail numbers when it is suggested that boundaries are moved. However I do strongly suggest moving the boundaries that rely on old field drains that are now covered with urban sprawl and using watercourses only where they are clear and real barriers.

This is a rare opportunity to make these changes as the present revue cvan result in subsequent parish changes and the in the Parliamentary review which is expected before the 2020 General Election. There has not been a better time to make these clarifying changes for around twenty years, it is an opportunity which should not be missed.

Map

The map which follows shows the area which I am giving suggestions about and shows the overall shape for new wards for the West of the town.

It is important to realise that the Westbrook Centre itself is important to much of the areas and which ward it lies in is somewhat arbitrary and perhaps inevitable I have placed it at an edge of wards.

Callands and Old Hall

This proposed ward is the New Town areas built as a planned group and now joined by the long standing Bus route number 18. The poorly defined existing boundaries in Old Hall are removed in the areas of Garwood Close, Cartier Close and Ledyard Close.

The suggested area is mostly the original Old Hall as shown on the New Town plan:

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Starting in the south east: From the point where the Liverpool-Manchester railway crosses the Sankey Brook; northward along the brook until the point where it meets the M62; then westwards along the M62 until its junction with Burtonwood Road (Jn 8); then southwards along Burtonwood Road until its junction with Westbrook Way; then eastwards along Westbrook Way until its junction with Cromwell Avenue; then southwards along Cromwell Avenue until its junction with Twenty Acre road; then west and south along Twenty Acre Road to the point where the trees forming a natural barrier between developments of Old Hall and Chapelford start to the end of that barrier adjacent to Cromwell Avenue by the fishpond; then southwards along Cromwell Avenue to the point where it crosses the Liverpool-Manchester railway; then eastwards along that railway to the starting point.

The tree barrier described above can be seen very clearly on Google Earth and only one footpath crosses the boundary which was the edge of the RAF Burtonwood/Home Office Signal and Telecoms stores when Old Hall was built. There has been little historic access via that route for community purposes making the tree barrier very suitable for a ward boundary particularly since it is a natural feature which is easily recognised and presents a physical barrier. The proposed line is highlighted approximated in blue on the aerial photograph below.

The homes included in the part of the new ward to the east of the barrier, south of Twenty Acre Road and west of Cromwell Avenue are those which are accessed by road from Livingston Close, Cavendish Close and Gregory Close.

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Whether the area called Kingswood should be included in this ward was less clear until the current building of homes north of Westbrook Way between Westbrook Crescent and Cromwell Avenue started. Kingswood had been isolated but dependent on the Westbrook Centre for all but a community centre making it possible that it would be possible to place it outside this ward. However the continuous development which will soon exist probably tips the balance to Old Hall/Callands as does the bus service. It may change when we see what is actually built at Omega but access to the school there is designed for use by residents coming from the south and not Kingswood.

Chapelford and Westbrook

The area of Chapelford, the homes in Westbrook south of the Westbrook Centre and west of Cromwell Avenue and joined with the dependant area of the Domville’s Farm estate and the new proposed area at Omega. The transport plan for the Omega area and Chapelford have long been integrated with council contributions aimed at providing a railway station at Warrington West with bus services through Chapelford Omega and to the Westbrook Centre.

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The accessibility from all these homes is key to the viability of the new station and there will also be an expectation that they will make use of the schools at Chapelford and Omega.

Whether the features planned for Omega actually materialise remains to be seen but the marrying of the existing areas, which are well interconnected by well used footpaths, to the Westbrook District Centre. The area bounded by Burtonwood Road, Westbrook Crescent, Cromwell Avenue and Twenty Acre Road has always turned to the district centre rather than Old Hall or Callands so it makes sense to not include it in the Callands and Old Hall proposed ward.

Starting in the North East at the point where the M62 crosses the Borough boundary going eastwards along the motorway to its junction with Burtonwood Road (Jn 8) then southwards along Burtonwood Road until its junction with Westbrook Way; then eastwards along Westbrook Way until its junction with Cromwell Avenue; then southwards along Cromwell Avenue until its junction with Twenty Acre road; then west and south along Twenty Acre Road to the point where the trees forming a natural barrier between developments of Old Hall and Chapelford start to the end of that barrier adjacent to Cromwell Avenue by the fishpond; then southwards along Cromwell Avenue to the point where it crosses the Liverpool-Manchester railway; then westwards along the railway to the point where it is crossed by Whittle Avenue; then northwards along Whittle Avenue until its junction with Lingley Green Avenue; then westwards and then southwards along Lingley Green Avenue until it crosses Whittle Brook; then westwards along Whittle Brook to the point where it meets the Borough boundary; then northwards along that boundary until it meets the M62 at the starting point.

Great Sankey North

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The only real change proposed here is to move the southern boundary to align with a main road rather than the brook which is not a clear boundary in the west of the area. As described earlier the Whittle Hall development was always intended to be integrated in Great Sankey North with the residents association even taking that as its name rather than Whittle Hall. The population of the area is generally closer on foot to shops and leisure facilities in Great Sankey than elsewhere and use the railway station there.

The proposed area is shown on the map above and described below in words:

Starting in the North West at the point where Whittle brook meets the Borough boundary; then southwards along that Boundary until it reaches Liverpool Road (A57); then eastwards along Liverpool Road until it crosses the Liverpool-Manchester railway; then eastwards along that railway until it is crossed by Whittle Avenue; then northwards along Whittle Avenue until its junction with Lingley Green Avenue; then westwards and then southwards along Lingley Green Avenue until it crosses Whittle Brook; then westwards along Whittle Brook to the starting point.

Burtonwood and Winwick

I proposes no boundary change for this ward because to do so would require considerartion of a much wider area that I have time to look at. I only observe that Winwick is not an obvious bedfellow for Burtonwood. The natural boundary is probably Sankey Brook and not the Motorway. Winwick and Croft are connected by bus services and I observe a greater coherence between Winwick and Croft than exists between Winwick and Burtonwood. Moving Winwick to ward is obviously not viable unless the over-sized nature of Culcheth has been addressed by other proposals.

Penketh and

The change I propose here is to align with main roads on the northern boundary matching the Great Sankey North changes. The area bounded by Penketh Brook, Liverpool Road and Penketh Road is also included in the ward. It is supported by shops and schools in Penketh with little if anything available towards Sankey Bridges offering facilities other than the directly adjacent library.

So starting at the North West where the Borough boundary crosses Liverpool Road; then eastward along Liverpool Road (A57) to its junction with Penketh Road and Sankey Way (A57); then in a south- westerly direction along Liverpool Road until it crosses Penketh Brook; then south along the brook and following the existing boundary until it is extended along the Borough boundary to the starting point.

Great Sankey South

As described previously some New Town housing was designed to be part of Great Sankey and it should remain so. Part of the old ward is suggested to be moved to Penketh in the previous section.

There is new housing at Sankey Bridges which is in the unparished area which could benefit from being considered as part of a larger community outside the Town Centre from which it is disconnected by the River Mersey. There is a proposal for a new High Level Ship Canal crossing with development which will see more housing build to the west of Forrest way and there is a need for community facilities. The overall development extends to Sankey Way at its junction with Cromwell

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Avenue and it seems appropriate to consider this whole area as one with the rest of the adjacent area. It will always be cut off by the Mersey and if numbers permit linking it to Great Sankey seems an appropriate community aim. I would suggest that the residents are consulted since it would increase their Community Charge by adding a Parish Precept.

Conclusion.

The proposed wards are intended to:

• Clarify boundaries and therefore apply to parish council wards • Re-inforce real community affinities • Re-balance electorates

The input is intended an extra source of information for the review of wards in Warrington by providing material about the New Town plan intentions which a real impact on communities but was not driven by the local council at the time.

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