Councillors approved a 68-bed Green Belt care home at Handforth and refused 10 flats on Mill Street, after a new national planning rulebook landed two days earlier.

A 68-bed care home on Green Belt land at Handforth has been approved, and two Macclesfield town schemes have been refused. Cheshire East’s Northern Planning Committee took all four of its decisions on 19 August at Macclesfield Town Hall. The minutes were published on 2 September (printed minutes, Northern Planning Committee, 19 August 2026).

The meeting ran to an unusual backdrop. The government published a rewritten National Planning Policy Framework on 17 August, with immediate effect, two days before councillors sat. Officers had already written their reports. They issued update reports on 18 August reassessing all three applications against the new national decision-making policies (update report, 19 August 2026).

Table of the four decisions taken by Cheshire East's Northern Planning Committee on 19 August 2026: former Knowle House, Sagars Road, Handforth, 68-bed care home, approved; The Cave, 91-95 Mill Street, Macclesfield, 10 one-bedroom flats, refused; Last Orders, 116-118 Park Lane, Macclesfield, pub to convenience store, refused; Brocklands, Brook Lane, Alderley Edge, tree preservation order, confirmed
The four items and what the committee did with each. Source: Cheshire East Council, printed minutes of the Northern Planning Committee, 19 August 2026. Graphic by The Macclesfield Times.

Handforth: the care home is approved, with £904 a bed for GPs

The committee approved application 25/2053/FUL, a two-storey 68-bed care home on the site of the former Knowle House on Sagars Road in Handforth, about seven miles north-west of Macclesfield. The nursing home that stood there was destroyed by fire and demolished in 1996. Officers had written a report recommending refusal on the same site in January 2026; that report was pulled from the agenda rather than voted on, and the revised scheme came back recommended for approval.

The approval carries a Section 106 agreement and 32 conditions. The only obligation in the agreement is a payment of £904 per bed space towards the local primary care network, meaning GP services. Across 68 beds that is £61,472 on our arithmetic.

The 32 conditions run from the ordinary to the specific:

  • obscure, non-opening glazing to stairwell windows on the east and north-east gable, below 1.7m
  • 10% of the energy used to come from decentralised, renewable or low carbon sources
  • measures to avoid birdstrike, and landscaping designed around that risk
  • an updated badger survey, a nesting bird survey and a hedgehog avoidance method
  • external lighting horizontally capped and fitted with cowls
  • contaminated land investigation, remediation if needed, and verification
  • a construction management plan and a highways condition survey

Councillor Julie Smith, a ward councillor, stepped down from the committee to speak against the application and left the room for the debate and the vote.

The new framework did not change the answer. Officers told members the site “would still be assessed as grey belt” under the new Green Belt policy GB7, because the land does not strongly contribute to the relevant Green Belt purposes and the council lacks a five-year supply of deliverable housing sites. Their conclusion was that “the benefit of the proposals outweigh harm to the Green Belt, and any other harm”.

One late objection is worth recording, because it came from inside the trade. A nursing care provider in the area wrote in to say that at least nine or ten bedrooms are consistently available at its home in Styal, that staffing is already extremely difficult, that two other new-build care homes have been built within five miles in recent years, and that more capacity would push vacancies up and thin the pool of staff further.

Officers did not dispute the picture. They said the council has “no strategic market position” to set against the applicant’s own needs assessment, and that a refusal on those grounds would not be sustainable on appeal. That is a consequential admission: a council without its own evidence on care home demand cannot easily refuse one.

Mill Street: refused, despite national policy backing the principle

The committee refused 26/0581/FUL, a plan to convert the rear of The Cave at 91 to 95 Mill Street into 10 one-bedroom apartments. It was a resubmission of a scheme that had already been refused once and dismissed at appeal, brought back with dormer windows in place of rooflights (officer report, 26/0581/FUL).

The new NPPF gave the scheme, in officers’ own words, “strong support for the principle”. Policy TC2 attaches substantial weight to residential accommodation that supports a town centre’s vitality; policy L2 does the same for better use of underused buildings; policy HO7 does the same for meeting housing need.

It was refused anyway, on three grounds:

  1. Living conditions. The flats would not get a good standard of internal amenity because habitable rooms lack outlook and natural light.
  2. Noise. No noise assessment was submitted. Officers judged that a residential scheme in that part of the building may not reach acceptable noise levels without mechanical ventilation, and concluded that “an alternative non-residential use should be sought”.
  3. Heritage. The dormers “overly domesticate the building”, cutting into the original roof structure and sitting at odds with its commercial and industrial character, causing less than substantial harm to a non-designated heritage asset and to a designated one, with no public benefit to weigh against it.

The application had been called in by Councillor Liz Braithwaite, who represents Macclesfield Central. Her stated reason was blunt: as far as she could tell, none of the reasons for the earlier refusal and dismissed appeal had been addressed.

Park Lane: the convenience store fails the sequential test

The committee delegated 25/4532/FUL back to officers to refuse. The application would have turned the closed Last Orders pub at 116 to 118 Park Lane into a convenience store, with a new shopfront (officer report, 25/4532/FUL).

The site is inside Macclesfield’s settlement boundary but outside the town centre boundary and the primary shopping area, which makes it an out-of-centre location for a main town centre use. The applicant’s sequential assessment concluded no suitable premises were available in the town centre, partly because the store had to be owned rather than leased. Officers found that analysis offered “not much flexibility” and only limited supporting evidence, and that suitable town centre or edge-of-centre premises may well be available.

That, and only that, was the reason for refusal. Officers explicitly did not object to losing the pub: it is vacant, no objections to its loss were received, and it is not on the council’s list of assets of community value. Nor did they object on parking, since the pub had none either.

Alderley Edge: the tree order stands

The fourth item was confirmed without argument. The 2026 tree preservation order at Brocklands on Brook Lane, Alderley Edge, is confirmed with no modifications, despite an objection. The committee added that the order may be reviewed, and varied, revoked or replaced, once there is enough arboricultural evidence.

What it means for you

If you live near Sagars Road in Handforth, the care home now has permission and a Section 106 to sign. Construction cannot start until that agreement is completed, and the permission carries a three-year time limit for implementation.

If you were watching Mill Street, the refusal is the second time this scheme has failed, and officers have now said in writing that they think the rear of the building is unlikely to work as housing at all. Any further attempt would need a noise assessment and a proper heritage impact assessment, neither of which was submitted this time.

For Park Lane, nothing about the refusal protects the pub. It closes off one particular retail use on one particular argument. A different applicant with a better sequential assessment, or a use that is not a main town centre use, would face a different test.

You can follow what is coming to the committee next on our Macclesfield planning news page, and the practical council information you may need alongside it is on our bin collection days and council tax bands pages.

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