WINSFORD is set for a building boom over the next decade as Cheshire tries to get to grips with the problem of its housing needs.

Cheshire County Council has earmarked sites for 43,500 new homes as part of its draft Structure Plan - a document which will shape the county's development up to 2011.

But an independent panel which has been examining the plan says that even that amount of new homes is not enough.

The panel, whose report has just been published, says that Cheshire's figure is "over-cautious" and has recommended that the number of new homes should be increased to 48,000.

It feels that the higher allocation is more in keeping with recent national estimates of housing need.

The county council will consider the panel's findings, and study other objections and representations, before publishing its amended Structure Plan in the summer.

Further public consultation will then take place in the autumn, and the final version of the plan is expected to become policy towards the end of the year or early in 1999.

In its 160-page report, the panel endorses the plan's broad objectives and most of its proposals on industrial and business land allocations, transport and the Green Belt.

However, as well as the housing allocations, the panel also recommends a number of other changes.

These include scrapping two industrial/business developments at Northwich - the strategic employment site west of Gadbrook Park and the strategic warehousing and distribution park at Lostock Gralam.

The panel's chairman, Trevor Hardy OBE, said: "I hope very much that our report will be a helpful contribution to the continuing debate surrounding important decisions to be taken by the county council before it finalises its blueprint for taking Cheshire into the next millennium."

Labour's Cty Clr Derek Bateman, chairman of the county council's environment services committee, said that the panel's report would require "careful study."

He added: "We shall take this and other representations fully into account in determining the final content of the Structure Plan."

The leader of Cheshire's Liberal Democrats, Cty Clr David Lloyd-Griffiths, said he was disappointed with the panel's call for increased housing.

He said: "I believe the housing figures we put forward are soundly-based and I am not convinced at this stage that a further 4,500 new homes are justified."

Cty Clr David Palmer, environment spokesman for the county council's Conservatives, said he was "delighted" with the recommendation to scrap the two employment sites in Northwich.

He added: "My group has always been against the use of these two green field sites for development, particularly the one next to Gadbrook Park.

"Our view is that such development would result in unwarranted destruction of the countryside."

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