AN exhibition to be held at Warrington’s Golden Square shopping centre tomorrow (Saturday) as part of a public consultation on the controversial Peel Hall housing development has been slammed by a local councillor.
Poplars and Hulme councillor Steve Roberts says developer Satnam has deliberately chosen the town centre location 
to try and win support from people not affected by the Peel Hall proposals.
These could include people from South Warrington – and people from outside Warrington altogether.
Cllr Roberts (right) said an exhibition held at Cinnamon Brow on Wednesday was “fair enough”.
But he believed tomorrow’s event was designed to counteract the Cinnamon Brow consultation which was bound to produce a massive, negative response.
Satnam have put forward proposals for 150 houses on “green” land at Peel Park – but also offered land for floodlit football pitches for a football club.
Cllr Roberts said: “Satnam are hiding behind a local football club when they claim that they would be providing community facilities by assisting them in providing floodlit pitches.
“Yes, the football club needs new pitches but, no, Peel Hall is not the answer. As one resident put it to me – ‘the people most affected in this development are all the residents of Cinnamon Brow, Orford and Houghton Green – footballers come and go but the residents would inherit this development for life.’
“Satnam claim that the facilities could be used and enjoyed by other sporting organisations – clearly they have not heard about the multi-million pound Orford Jubilee Hub and the facilities on offer there.”
Cllr Roberts said the exhibitions, arranged by a PR company, were a “sham”.
The PR company claimed Golden Square had been chosen because there would be a bigger footfall.
“I suppose we should be grateful they are at least conducting it in Warrington and not Manchester or Liverpool!”
He claimed Satnam might be seeking only 150 houses at present but it was clear they also eventually wanted a further 1,250 houses, wiping out the green space of Peel Hall.
Peel Hall exhibition slammed
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Gary Skentelbery
Experienced journalist for more than 40 years. Managing Director of magazine publishing group with three in-house titles and on-line daily newspaper for Warrington. Experienced writer, photographer, PR consultant and media expert having written for local, regional and national newspapers. Specialties: PR, media, social networking, photographer, networking, advertising, sales, media crisis management. Chair of Warrington Healthwatch Director Warrington Chamber of Commerce Patron Tim Parry Johnathan Ball Foundation for Peace. Trustee Warrington Disability Partnership. Former Chairman of Warrington Town FC.
5 Comments
“Satnam have put forward proposals for 150 houses on “green” land at Peel Park – but also offered land for floodlit football pitches for a football club.”
Er, that’s not entirely accurate, the land earmarked for improved football pitches is council owned: Satnam are not offering any of their land for sports facilities in this proposal. See this thread on the forum, which has just celebrated its 1st birthday!
http://forum.www.warrington-worldwide.co.uk/index.php?/topic/6836-talks-in-progress-for-peel-hall/
Thanks for the summary fugtifino, I’m afraid I wasn’t able to attend the Wednesday’s consultation, a couple of my neighbours have also given me similar feedback.
Well, I was there on Wednesday night and the general feeling was that people were against the whole development. The only posistive was that some kids in Warrington were going to get some really great sports facilities-but not the kids where the houses are going to be built. And the fact that Satnam is going to develope the sports facility on council land and not their own land raised some very interesting questions by residents as one resident put it “is this not scratch my back I’ll scratch yours” The fact is that this is privatley owned land and if the developer wants to put in a planning application, he can. But why do they feel that this time they need to develope council oweved land as part of that application?
I met the Satnam rep today at Golden Gates. It was the first I'd heard of this plan. I asked him who owned the land that the pitch would be built on and he said he didn't know – though I suspect he did. Satnam are claiming that the 'planning gain' is worth £1 million. Sounds like tripe to me
Despite the slick well presented PR exercise by Satnam and the use emotive language large number residents not stop between 3pm and 8pm came large opposition plans not fooled
Large numbers of residents attended the open display at the Church of the Resurrection at Cinnamon Brow. The event lasted all of 5 hours – from 3pm to 8pm. In that time Satnam, in the shape of Colin Griffith, Managing Director, delivered a very professional PR exercise supported by complimentary literature laced with highly emotive language. In spite of all this the feedback from those who attended reflected strong local opposition to the proposed building scheme.
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