ON December 8 my wife and I attended the drop-in session at the Turnpike Gallery in Leigh hosted by Wigan Council’s planning department to explain plans to de-classify areas of the green belt in Pennington and Lowton.

We spoke to a council officer, who said he was the head of the department.

We were already briefed about Wigan’s plans to de-classify two areas of land, one bounded roughly by the A580 East Lancashire Road, the A579 Atherleigh Way and the existing housing development close to Leigh RUFC, with the other termed Pocket Nook Lane, Lowton.

We wanted to obtain more information about why, in particular, the Pennington site had been selected.

After leaving the drop-in session we drew the following conclusions.

Firstly council officers had not considered all possible brownfield sites.

Secondly council officials had failed to look into all the drainage issues that would arise from building on the Pennington site.

Thirdly council officers had a cavalier attitude towards the need to deal with the consequences of the drainage issues that must follow from de-classifying the site from green belt.

Fourthly Wigan Council’s Manchester-bound public transport proposal along one of the busiest trunk routes in the north west to serve the development takes no account of a heavy rail option, while building on land now earmarked for development would rule rail out completely.

David Clough