IN Brief:
- Bloor Homes has secured outline permission for up to 200 homes on a 15.4-hectare Macclesfield site.
- The Planning Inspectorate classified the land as Grey Belt and found the relevant development tests were satisfied.
- Forty-five per cent affordable housing, infrastructure commitments, and Cheshire East's housing shortage weighed strongly in favour.
Bloor Homes has secured outline planning permission for a residential development of up to 200 homes on Prestbury Road in Macclesfield after the Planning Inspectorate overturned Cheshire East Council’s refusal of the scheme.
The appeal decision grants permission with all matters reserved except access. The 15.4-hectare site lies on the northern edge of Macclesfield and comprises three fields bordered by hedgerows, trees, residential development, woodland, and Prestbury Road.
Bloor’s submitted material has consistently indicated a development of up to 200 homes, although the formal description of development does not impose a numerical ceiling. The inspector adopted the 200-home basis for the appeal, leaving final dwelling numbers, layout, scale, appearance, and landscaping for later approval.
The scheme also proposes public open space, supporting infrastructure, and a single vehicular access from Prestbury Road. Forty-five per cent of the housing is proposed as affordable, materially above the 30% requirement identified in Cheshire East’s adopted planning policy.
Cheshire East refused the original application, reference 25/0210/OUT, in September 2025. The subsequent appeal hearing was held over 31 March and 1 April this year, followed by an inspector’s site visit in May.
Three principal issues framed the decision: the effect on landscape character, the safety of the proposed Prestbury Road junction, and whether the housing should be treated as inappropriate development in the Green Belt.
The inspector accepted that development would alter the present open character of the site and identified minor adverse landscape effects. The site lies close to the Bollin Valley Local Landscape designation, while Upton Hall, a Grade II-listed building, and the Prestbury Road Conservation Area also formed part of the wider assessment.
Those impacts were not considered sufficient to prevent development. The inspector concluded that the proposed access would not create unacceptable highway safety effects and that the site did not make a strong contribution to the Green Belt purposes relevant to the government’s Grey Belt definition.
That conclusion was central to the appeal. Current national policy allows certain development on Grey Belt land where a defined set of tests is satisfied, rather than treating the land in the same way as Green Belt sites that make a stronger contribution to the purposes of the designation.
The inspector found those tests were met. The remaining Green Belt would continue to perform its intended role, the location was considered sustainable, and Cheshire East could not demonstrate the required five-year supply of deliverable housing land.
The most recently published figure before the appeal was a 3.8-year supply, representing a shortfall of about 3,151 homes against the five-year requirement. More recent material discussed at the hearing suggested the position may have worsened further, although the inspector relied primarily on the established 3.8-year figure.
Housing need therefore carried substantial weight in the planning balance. The proposed 45% affordable provision strengthened that case, while the scheme also includes infrastructure and public-space measures intended to satisfy the Golden Rules associated with Grey Belt development.
Those measures cover surface-water drainage, public-transport improvements, a new bus stop and related contributions, pedestrian crossing works, enhanced footpath links, and financial contributions towards education, sport, and healthcare. Publicly accessible green space and improved connections towards Riverside Park are also proposed.
For the construction programme, however, the appeal decision is an enabling step rather than permission to start building immediately. With everything except access reserved, Bloor must still prepare detailed proposals covering the layout, scale, appearance, landscaping, drainage, and technical coordination needed to convert the outline parameters into buildable phases.
The site’s topography will influence that work. Land falls towards the River Bollin, while a seasonal pond and existing surface-water issues have featured in local concerns. The inspector accepted that drainage could be dealt with through detailed design and conditions, noting that statutory consultees had not objected to the proposed approach.
The single T-junction from Prestbury Road will also need to be coordinated with the off-site highway and public-transport works secured through the planning obligation. Access design, visibility, pedestrian movement, and cycle provision become construction issues once the reserved-matters package begins to fix levels, junction geometry, and site phasing.
Landscape mitigation will be equally important because the appeal approval does not remove the identified harm. Detailed design is expected to reinforce existing landscape features and increase tree cover, while development is concentrated away from steeper land towards the river.
For contractors and suppliers, the significance of the decision lies in the conversion of a refused application into a viable future workload rather than an immediate tender opportunity. Groundworks, roads and sewers, utilities, structural packages, housebuilding trades, landscaping, and public-realm work will only follow once the detailed planning and technical design stages are complete.
The case also offers another example of how Grey Belt policy is being tested through real planning decisions. Land can remain formally within the Green Belt yet produce a different outcome where its contribution to specified Green Belt purposes is limited and where housing need, affordability, infrastructure, and sustainability weigh strongly in favour.
Bloor has therefore won the policy argument needed to bring the site back into the development pipeline. The next phase is more practical: reserved matters, engineering design, infrastructure agreements, procurement, and phasing will determine how quickly the 15.4-hectare site can move from an appeal decision to active construction.
