Barratt Homes have submitted what we understand will be their final attempt to get the application granted.

They have made the minimum of concessions on various aspects but have failed to address any of the key points.  Having been unable to find any sensible way to make the Meadow Lane / Longton Road junction work they’ve simply given up on the need for a signalised junction. They are proposing to add an additional short lane to allow two lanes of traffic into the junction from Meadow Lane.   With no traffic signals this means that cars turning right into Meadow Lane will block the path of anyone trying to turn right out of Meadow Lane, and with the additional volume of traffic, this would make the junction significantly worse and less safe than it is right now.

Another really interesting point is that even with the amount of spin, misrepresentation and dubious data we know Barratts are famed for, they have had to admit that even with their proposed amendments the junction will be overcapacity if their proposal goes through!

Pretty much everything else other than the number of houses, which they’ve reduced, is still as wrong as it was in the original application.  I’m afraid, the facts, no matter how inconvenient for Barratt Homes, are still the facts.

There is now a period of 21 days for consultation, during which time we need to put in any more objections regarding the amendments.  I wouldn’t like to think that they’d deliberately timed this to co-incide with summer holidays, thereby making it difficult for everyone to properly assess their new documents!

However this means the most likely date the application will go before the planning committee is now September 16th.

Amendments can be found on the councils site here.