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Manchester’s council is fighting a legal challenge to its resolve to maintain a 440-seat car parking next to a number one school, despite activists’ fears that it would build up air pollutants and affect children’s health.
More than 12,000 people have signed a petition opposing debatable plans to keep old Central Retail Park’s car parks open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, for up to two years.
Parents and youth at The New Islington Free School held demonstrations outdoors or inside the city corridor when the city’s planning committee gave its approval in October 2019.
The move would have allowed Manchester’s board to generate profits while presenting its long-term vision for the Great Ancoats Street desert site, which it bought for $37 million in 2017.
But the city council’s plans were suspended through a request for judicial review of the decision of the plan-making committee through Activists Trees Not Cars.
Gemma Cameron, the founder of the organization The Popular Petition, will present the case for review at a virtual hearing on Friday.
Ms Cameron said: “This audience is not only for our campaign, but also for others fighting for blank air and more green spaces.
“The council announced those plans after pointing to a climate emergency. We’ll have to hold them accountable and make sure they keep their promise.
“We hoped that our request, as well as the occasions we held and the meetings we attended, would convince the council to abandon its parking plans and paints with us to expand more environmentally friendly alternatives.
“What Trees Not Cars has achieved is very symbolic, it appears that a networked organization is able to represent the demands of a wider audience. “
Julia Kovaliova, an Ancoats resident and member of Trees Not Cars, opposed the application when she gave the impression to the plan-making committee in 2019.
Ms. Kovaliova said her 11-year-old son had asthma and feared that her four-year-old son would also spread poor air quality disease in Manchester.
Speaking before this week’s hearing, Ms. Kovaliova said: “The way to get cars out of my son’s school is to take legal action.
“My circle of family members is one of many who have moved to Ancoats for over 10 years and we want green spaces for our young people to grow up satisfied and healthy.
The Trees Not Cars petition also asks the board to amend its plan to rebuild the 10. 5-acre Central Retail Park for more public green spaces.
A design framework approved through the city council executive in October last year promised a “dynamic new neighborhood” with approximately one million square feet of space.
But separate surveys through the council, local councillors and Trees Not Cars got more than 800 responses from others who had no more open spaces, housing or the site was remodeled into a new public park.
A Manchester Council spokesman said: “We can verify that a hearing related to the transitional building permit for public car parking in former Central Retail Park will be held this week. “
“Since legal proceedings are ongoing, it is not appropriate to make additional comments at this stage. “