RESIDENTS who have spent 21 years campaigning to put Altrincham’s Davenport Green back into the green belt have spoken out at a public inquiry.

The residents, who hail from Timperley, Hale Barns and Newall Green, are worried Trafford Council’s new Core Strategy could lead to development on the stretch of countryside.

Davenport Green, often described as a ‘buffer’ between Wythenshawe and Altrincham and referred to as the ‘Timperley wedge’, used to be green belt land but for the past 15 years it has been designated countryside.

In 2009, Trafford Council drew up plans to return 89 acres of the 335-acre site back to the green belt but changed its mind after the government announced in March that Manchester Airport had been named as one of the government's 21 new enterprise zones.

At a public inquiry between September 28 to 30, a spokesperson for Trafford Council said the government plans for growth and the enterprise zone ‘highlighted the fact that Davenport Green may be needed in the future’.

The council want the land the retain its countryside status, which it says will allow only ‘exceptional’ developments.

The inquiry into the council’s Core Strategy began in February, but was halted in July to allow for a six-week public consultation on the Davenport Green issue.

Interested parties include the land’s owners Royal London Asset Management, Trafford Council, Campaign for the Protection of Rural England (CPRE), Shell and Peel Holdings.

Timperley resident Mary Eastwood, who also attended Davenport Green inquiries in 1989 and 1994, said she wanted to save the ‘last remnant’ of an ‘absolutely fantastic wildlife area’.

Jeremy Williams, from Hale Barns, said: “It’s called the Timperley wedge and that is what it is, a wedge of countryside. My concern is that development on this wedge will suffocate the area.”

Andy Yuille, senior policy and campaigns officer for CPRE North West, told the inquiry that the council’s decision was not ‘necessary or desirable ‘ “There may well be an opportunity for development. But opportunity is not the same as need.

“It seems that the possibility of some unspecified development, that could take away from elsewhere in the borough, does not constitute as justification,” he said.

The government appointed inspector Shelagh Bussey is expected to reach a decision by December.