Today I’m going to start off this blog post with a bit of fun. Here’s a quick panoramic shot I took while people were finding their seats for the Mayor’s Inauguration at the Town Hall on Wednesday. You can pan across it by clicking and dragging left-and-right.
It’s a fun little shot and I’m impressed that Facebook was able to recognise that it’s a panoramic shot (which is how you can scroll it). Maybe I’m easily impressed, I’ll let you decide on that one. If the embedded image doesn’t work for you (“your browser may vary” and all that), click on it and you’ll go to the page where it will work.
Okay, let’s get down to the good news: the application to overdevelop Wingates at Dixon Street has been dismissed. That doesn’t mean the application won’t come back in a new form but it’s good news for the moment and I’m more than happy to embrace that since right now Westhoughton is under siege from developers.
After the Planning Inspector ruled that Bolton doesn’t have a 5-year plan for housing (I would argue that the decision was wrong and should have been fought more vigorously than it has but, sadly, I was outvoted on that one) we can expect developers to try to take full advantage of that while a new plan is being drawn up. So let’s be happy that we’ve managed to fight off what we have.