Personally Speaking: ‘Green belt ware­house plan isn’t my cup of tea’

My Personally Speaking column in The Sentinel (2 July 2026)

One of the best things about being our MP is the chance to sit down with a cuppa and a slice of cake and hear from local people about what’s on their minds.

That’s exactly what I did last Fri­day, when I held my latest cof­fee morn­ing at Aud­ley Cricket Club.

Thank you to every­one who joined me and thank you to every­one who helped make it hap­pen – includ­ing those who baked a cake! Much bet­ter bakers than me…

As you might expect, one of the issues that came up time and again was site alloc­a­tion AB2 in New­castle Bor­ough Coun­cil’s Local Plan.

It’s why, as tem­per­at­ures soared a week last Wed­nes­day, I stood up in Par­lia­ment to present a peti­tion in the House of Com­mons call­ing on the bor­ough coun­cil to remove AB2 from its Local Plan.

After receiv­ing the sup­port of more than 800 people from Aud­ley and the sur­round­ing area – our peti­tion shows that the views of local people are very clear

– we don’t need bluster and excuses, we need the bor­ough coun­cil to listen.

AB2 is ear­marked as a Stra­tegic Employ­ment Site, cov­er­ing around 80 hec­tares of green belt land near Junc­tion 16 of the M6, for large-scale ware­hous­ing and logist­ics units.

It rightly leaves res­id­ents wor­ried about traffic, the land­scape, noise and light pol­lu­tion.

That’s why res­id­ents – and I – have pushed back so strongly. We remain con­cerned about the inef­fect­ive and infre­quent engage­ment from the coun­cil on this import­ant point.

This is land that gives Aud­ley its char­ac­ter – open coun­tryside that acts as a buf­fer between the vil­lages and the M6 and A500 around them.

Once it’s built on, there’s no get­ting it back. Of course we need to build homes but we need to build in the right place and build com­munit­ies not ware­houses.

I have lost count of the num­ber of con­ver­sa­tions I have had with res­id­ents about this – on the door­step, over a cuppa, on email and walk­ing our streets.

The con­cerns voiced to me by res­id­ents are reas­on­able and con­sist­ent - increased HGV traffic through vil­lages with single­car­riage­way roads and no pave­ments, more noise and light pol­lu­tion in a part of the bor­ough that people chose to live pre­cisely because it was quiet and green and the loss of hab­itat for wild­life that has called this land home for gen­er­a­tions.

This isn’t the first step I’ve taken on AB2. I’ve sub­mit­ted my thoughts – and those of res­id­ents – throughout the Local Plan pro­cess, reflect­ing the con­cerns that res­id­ents have raised with me as MP.

But that con­sulta­tion pro­cess only has real value if it genu­inely helps to shape decisions, and there is very little evid­ence of that here.

I’ve also been rais­ing the safety of the

lay­out of the A500 Aud­ley slip road with National High­ways and Stafford­shire County Coun­cil, given the exist­ing con­cerns about traffic in this part of the world already.

Adding a major new logist­ics site into that mix, without those issues being resolved first, doesn’t add up and is a cause of major con­cern.

That is why I took this peti­tion to the House of Com­mons. Put­ting res­id­ents’ con­cerns dir­ectly on the record in Par­lia­ment, and send­ing a clear sig­nal that the com­munity must be heard.

I will keep using every tool avail­able to me as our MP to make sure res­id­ents’ con­cerns are heard – in Par­lia­ment, with those behind the pro­pos­als, and dir­ectly with the coun­cil.

Res­id­ents have been rais­ing AB2 since 2021, and they deserve a coun­cil that engages with them prop­erly and openly, as it makes decisions on the future of the site mov­ing for­ward.

I will not stop push­ing until the coun­cil listens, prop­erly, to the people who live, learn and work across Aud­ley and the sur­round­ing area.