VOTE: Hundreds set to protest at Cutacre plan (From The Bolton News)

VOTE: Hundreds set to protest at Cutacre plan

9:30am Wednesday 2nd September 2009

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HUNDREDS of furious residents are expected to descend on Bolton Town Hall next week to protest against controversial plans to create an industrial park on Green Belt land.

A special meeting has been organised for people who are fighting the council’s plans to turn Cutacre, near Over Hulton, into a major commercial development.

Residents say they were promised the open-cast mine would eventually be turned into a country park when short-term coal extraction started in 2006.

They have now submitted a petition with more than 800 signatures to the council demanding that the promise is fulfilled.

Cllr Andy Morgan, who is supporting the residents’ campaign, said: “The fact that 800 people have signed a petition obviously demonstrates the strength of feeling of the residents of Over Hulton, and that is just the beginning really.

“I am getting 20 or 30 calls a day over this issue. If the council thinks that we are just going to roll over and not be listened to, then it is going to have a rude awakening, because we are going to fight it to the death.”

The site’s owner, UK Coal, says Cutacre was always envisaged as an industrial park with landscaping, and the council’s director of regeneration and development, Keith Davies, said Cutacre was necessary to secure Bolton’s economic future. It is hoped that the development will create up to 8,000 jobs.

Comments on the plan can be sent to ldfconsultation @bolton.gov.uk or Spatial Planning Team, 5th Floor, Bolton Town Hall, Bolton, BL1 1RU.

The meeting is in the Town Hall’s Festival Hall at 7pm on Wednesday September 9.

julian.thorpe@ theboltonnews.co.uk

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