Plans for a 12-mile Eruv in Hale and Hale Barns have been dropped, Altrincham Today has learned.
The Hale Eruv Project Charitable Trust will formally announce tomorrow that it has informed Trafford Council it has withdrawn its controversial proposals for the “symbolic boundary”.
The Trust had submitted a planning application back in July for the creation of an Eruv to allow orthodox Jews to carry or push certain items – including young children in prams or disabled people in wheelchairs – outside of their homes on the Sabbath.
The plans necessitated the erection of 95 galvanised steel poles, the majority of which would have been six metres in height.
But the Trust has now said that “in the interests of communal unity, the trustees of the Hale Eruv Project have, after careful consideration, decided not to proceed with their current planning application”.
Local MP Graham Brady had called on the Trust to reconsider so as not to risk creating “rancour and intolerance” in the area.
The local community made their opposition to the plans clear at a public meeting back in 2014, and over 500 letters of objection had been received by the council since the revised plans were submitted in July, with fewer than 100 letters in support. A multi-faith action group had also been set up to fight the plans.
The Eruv would have been only the 11th of its kind in the UK.
