Cheshire East Council seek planning approval for controversial scheme at Poynton Pool

Campaigners say they are ‘dismayed’ at the decision to recommend approval for controversial plans for Poynton Pool.

The plan could result in more than 120 trees being felled and countless others cut back and irreparably damaged by excavations, both of which are contrary to the relevant British Standards.

The recommendation for approval has been made in a Cheshire East Council (CEC) planning officer’s report ahead of the plan coming before the council’s Strategic Planning Board (the Board) on Friday 16^th January.

Friends of Poynton Pool (FoPP) are planning to stage a protest outside the meeting at Macclesfield Town Hall and are appealing for supporters to join them.

The Friends Group chair Mike Ellison, an arboriculturist, says:

“Despite years of trying to get Cheshire East Council to engage with us to find a more suitable, environmentally friendly solution for the spillway improvements at Poynton Pool, we’re dismayed the council’s planning department continues to stand by this flawed scheme that amounts to wanton environmental vandalism.

“It flies in the face of common sense, and it flies in the face of public opinion, and we appeal for anyone who agrees with us to join us outside Macclesfield town hall next week.”

The recommendation for approval comes in defiance of an open letter to Cheshire East Council asking for the application to be withdrawn amid ‘serious procedural issues around the conduct of the planning authority’.

In it, Friends of Poynton Pool says it has taken specialist planning advice regarding ‘the numerous irregularities in the planning process’.

The fight to save the trees has been raging for over three years since Cheshire East Council first unveiled its improvement scheme, deemed to be necessary as the pool, which dates from the 1700s, is officially classed as a high-risk reservoir that could endanger human life if there was an uncontrolled release of water.

The original application was deferred by councillors on CEC’s Strategic Planning Board in April 2024 to allow for five considerations:

1. The accuracy of data surrounding the pool’s water levels.
2. The impact of removing trees on the pool’s embankment.
3. To instigate a further independent review, if necessary.
4. To review the location of the proposed mitigation and consideration of any alternatives.
5. To encourage engagement with third parties to consider and/or explain alternatives.

Signed by Mr Ellison, the letter states:

“In the period since the application was considered by the Board, additional research has been carried out by the applicant to attempt to meet the request of the Board for additional information. However, significant changes seem to have been suggested to the proposal itself although this course of action was not requested by the Board.

“The current legal position is that the original application stands deferred at the present time and must be subject to a decision by the Board. If the applicant now wishes to change the details of the proposed scheme as set out in the application, then this must be done in a formal way. It cannot be done ‘informally’ because the application has already been considered by the Board.

“This is a very unsatisfactory situation for the public, councillors and the applicant as it is resulting in confusion about the full details of the ‘revised’ scheme and the information which is being relied on to support it.”

The letter goes on to say that the consideration of a planning application is not an interactive process whereby the council can make changes to the application after it has been considered by the Board and deferred.

It adds:

“From all perspectives the current situation is very unsatisfactory. There have now been so many different documents published that it is impossible to identify which have been withdrawn, modified or added and what is the definitive body of evidence being presented by the applicant. The scheme itself has also been ‘changed’ several times although none of these changes can modify the application as deferred.

“The only sensible solution now is for the applicant to be asked to withdraw the original application and submit a new application which includes what is now proposed as the scheme and a set of documents which provide the definitive evidence to support it.”

The alternative, says FoPP, is for the Board to either approve or reject the application if the council refuses to withdraw it and, if so, explain how SPB is empowered to consider a planning application that has not been submitted.

Back in October 2022, CEC engaged in a public ‘consultation’ to outline the proposed works at Poynton Pool. There was very strong negative feedback with over 1,200 responses from members of the public.

Residents questioned whether the works were needed, raised concerns about the environmental and visual impact of the loss of trees, and that other solutions should be considered when managing what is demonstrably a low risk.

Since then, there have been three planning consultations ahead of the plans coming before Strategic Planning Board for a second time on 16^th January 2026; Christmas and New Year 2023/24, November 2025 when proposals were removed from SPB’s agenda at the 11^th hour, and a further consultation during last month’s festive period in response to the ‘revised’ plan that will be presented next week.

These controversial proposals have consistently been opposed with close to 10,000 negative responses from members of the public.

The Friends group has staged a long-running campaign to try and convince planners to consider an alternative, more environmentally friendly scheme.

Described as a conventional engineering solution, the group’s proposal is to increase overflow capacity and create a new weir and emergency water drawdown facility on the pool’s embankment next to London Road North.

It would use level markers at the side of the pool side placed among the existing trees to enable long-term monitoring of the dam crest.

It also includes an optional new culvert under the main road to avoid overspill onto the road in the event of an extreme flood.

Friends of Poynton Pool say its requests for meetings with the council went unheeded for 10 months after the plan was deferred in 2024, while the council has still not carried out a geotechnical site investigation of the embankment to determine its composition, despite being advised this was required in 2019.

Without this information, the geotechnical risk of any proposal cannot be evaluated - either technically or financially, says the group.

A bathymetric survey undertaken on behalf of the Environment Agency in 2024, found the pool’s volume of water and silt was 75,598 cubic meters – 42% less than the 130,000m³ estimated by the council in its original planning application but the council’s engineers have refused to revise their risk assessment to account for this and other anomalies in their original data.

The 2024 statutory Section 10 Inspection of the reservoir required designs to be finalised by December 2025 and work to be completed by December 2026, although the current situation could result in the deadline being pushed back even later.

Almost two years have elapsed since the controversial proposal was originally deferred by SPB with an explicit request to: “encourage engagement with third parties to consider and/or explain alternatives.”

Despite this CEC’s Planning Officer has stated in their report to SPB:

“The presence of a viable alternative that meets relevant standards is a material planning consideration. However, there remains some uncertainty regarding the impacts of Option 1D (suggested by Friends of Poynton Pool), and whilst these remain, only limited weight can be afforded to it as a realistic, and better, alternative to the current scheme. As such this is not considered to be sufficient to tip the planning balance against the application proposal.

Summary recommendation.  Approve subject to conditions”