RESIDENTS who feel helpless and furious following plans to demolish the Mid Cheshire College campus and build houses on the site, have been urged to object with their heads and not their hearts.

Hartford Parish Council called an extraordinary meeting last Wednesday, to discuss a planning application to knock down the college in Chester Road and build 108 homes in its place – and ultimately to discuss how to object against it.

Scores of residents turned up to the meeting – some just eager to have their say and others desperate for advice on how they can help fight against the plans, which were submitted to Cheshire West and Chester Council in January by housing developer Cadent.

Hartford resident Angela Jones opened the public forum at the start of the meeting by standing to make a point which earned applause from other residents in the room.

“I have long been opposed to the way that Mid Cheshire College was taken over and the way things went through without any public knowledge,” Ms Jones said.

“I’m absolutely furious about it. Because the result of that will be to disadvantage anybody over the age of 16 who isn’t lucky or successful enough to gain entrance to Sir John Deane’s or St Nicholas Sixth Form. That disadvantages so many people - probably 80 per cent of this community - and it’s totally wrong. It is discriminatory.

“And then we come to the building of houses – that is absolutely stupid. To build houses on that site and knock down a perfectly good college that has had millions spent on it, with one access road to the housing, it’s just beyond belief to be quite honest.

“I think the whole thing is absolutely disgusting.”

After members of Hartford Parish Council listened to residents’ concerns, they urged people to join them in lodging their complaints with the CWAC planning department – but warned against using emotive objections.

Cllr Martin Loftus responded with a reluctant air of realism, urging residents to let go of the idea of keeping the college open, and instead to focus on objecting against the plans to build houses on the site.

Cllr Loftus said: “It’s not public land, so we can’t block them from putting an application in to knock it down. Hartford Parish Council has limited influence, to be fair, but what we might be able to do is affect what is put on that site.

“I know it’s a highly emotive issue and I’m as cross about it as anybody else. But if we focus our energy on coming up with reasonable planning-based objections to the 108 homes, that has to be a more constructive way of going about it, rather than bemoaning the loss of the college.”

For those in attendance who had not yet given up hope of keeping the site open as a college, the meeting proved to be a sobering experience, with CWAC councillor and Hartford resident, Cllr Sam Naylor echoing Cllr Loftus’ views.

“It’s a travesty, but you can’t dwell on the fact that it’s not going to open as a college again,” Cllr Naylor said.

“There’s a whole list of reasons why the college has had to close, and nobody is going to be able to doing anything about it.”

But for those who prioritise stopping more houses from being built in a village which has seen its infrastructure stretched to within breaking point by large housing developments in recent years, they may have left with more optimism.

Parish councillors took their first steps in building a case to fight against the housing plans, by voting in favour of commissioning an air quality survey and a traffic survey along Chester Road and the surrounding area.

They also discussed lodging an initial objection against the plans on grounds of air pollution, increase of traffic movements, and a lack of soft infrastructure such as doctors’ surgeries.

Parish Council Chairman Cllr Martin Llewellyn asked members of the public to follow the parish council’s lead in objecting on these grounds, and said signing a petition will not be good enough.

Cllr Llewellyn said: “It’s really important that people object to CWAC. Sign petitions as well, that’s fine – but it’s important to submit comments individually to the council as well.

“We have thousands of signatures on a petition, but in terms of public objections on the planning site, at the moment there are only two, and that is the most important thing.”

To comment on the application, go to cheshirewestandchester.gov.uk and search reference 19/00203/FUL on the Planning and Building Control tab.