Bricks and tarmac is not Greenheart! (From Leigh Journal)

Bricks and tarmac is not Greenheart!

11:21am Thursday 24th November 2011 in Letters

WE are constantly told the proposed North Leigh Development is an area of dereliction and a danger to the public.

Strangely this same area is grazed by domestic livestock, played on by local children and enjoyed by nature lovers and dog walkers who come to no harm and haven't for many years. Quarries, disused mine shafts are only visible to those who remember where they were. The colliery spoil heaps are wooded knolls.

The Greenheart Mr Barton wants to leave for future generations is in reality a development of 1,800 dwellings intersected by a proposed busy main road that would eventually link up and cut across the borough.

We are being floated the employment opportunities bait of commercial units alongside the housing.

If anyone has any doubts about what this site will look like we need only look to the Gadbury Fold development. Do we really need more like this?

This Greenheart is actually a little landscaping on a commercial development that will swallow a large open space, put more pressure on existing roads and facilities and diminish the qualities of life and sparse amenities the existing residents of Westleigh and Hindley Green have.

Why don't Wigan council and Mr Barton try to talk the current landowners, so concerned about public safety and welfare, to donate the land to the community for regeneration as one of the proposed Diamond Jubilee Woodlands?

Throwing bricks and tarmac over open space is definitely not creating a green heart.

Terry Smith, Westleigh Lane, Leigh