With Parliament having been prorogued and its dissolution imminent, Julie Hilling MP called a public meeting with the Horwich Loco Works developers to provide an update on progress so far.
There seemed to be no new information from the developers about the building of the 1,700 houses but that may be because they don’t follow the General Election timetable.
There are numerous concerns on health, education, sporting facilities, roads and other matters but the most important is how the contaminated land is going to be dealt with. The site has a long history so many dangerous chemicals and substances were dumped there at a time before modern environmental legislation.
With so many family houses being built, there is going to be a surge in the number of children going to primary school so I asked where a new one would be sited. The options range from:
- Building a school right at the heart of the development for greatest access for families and to minimise traffic from the school run
to
- not building a new school so parents have to drive their children all over Horwich on our already congested roads
The planner, sitting next to Council Leader Cllr Cliff Morris, said that they were minded to put the new school right on the Middlebrook edge of the massive housing development – they did not say it will be there but it was the only site they suggested when asked.
When asked to identify the exact location on a map, by a member of the audience, the location was identified as the Ashworths Asbestos Tip. It leads me to wonder just what the Bolton Council leadership thinks of the people of Horwich.
At the end of the, at times, heated meeting, I challenged Cllr Cliff Morris to guarantee that 100% of the money raise by Bolton Council from the Loco Works scheme would be spent on the current people of Horwich. He said every penny would be! Taking into consideration how the Labour Establishment treats the people of Horwich, not everyone is going to believe Cllr Morris’ pre-election promise.