Despite Cheltenham Civic Society’s campaigning over more than two years to save and find new uses for what remains of the town’s industrial heritage, Cheltenham Borough Council’s Planning Committee has given the go-ahead for a banal housing development across the northern half of Lansdown Industrial Estate.
Pleas from CCS trustee, Steve Bryson, and Cheltenham History Society’s Jill Waller, fell on deaf ears at the planning committee on 18th January, as the committee voted unanimously to grant Cheshire Pension Fund planning permission.
CBC’s planning policy for the site called for mixed-use redevelopment with ’employment-led regeneration, which may include an element of residential’. Yet the Planning Committee meekly rolled over and accepted all housing and no employment uses!
So, with great regret, our industrial past will soon be consigned to the history books with nothing much more than some interpretation boards to record it ever existed on this site. But, thanks to the intervention of one councillor, those boards may at least include some QR codes to direct people to further online information!
