‘Grey belt is a misnomer’: Stockport divided on Labour’s housing plans

Simon Dunn, and his son Oli Dunn, say there’s a shortage of housing, especially modern homes. Photograph: Joel Goodman/The Guardian

High Lane, a village on the outskirts of Stockport, is an attractive place to live – close to plenty of green space with the beauty of the Peak District on the doorstep, but with the prospering city of Manchester within easy reach. An ideal place, some might say, to build some of the Labour government’s promised 1.5m new houses.

But in 2020 Stockport council voted against the proposed Greater Manchester spatial planning framework put forward by Andy Burnham’s Greater Manchester Combined Authority (GMCA). The rebellion came from Conservative and Liberal Democrat councillors objecting to green belt development in High Lane and elsewhere in the borough.