Barrow and Furness – Page 9 – thecumbriachronic.co.uk

CRUMBRIA: 2.7.2026

NEWS that a developer wants to tack a massive new housing estate on the back end of Hawcoat, Barrow, has been rushed to the Chronic.

Upto 370 homes would go on fields next to the Holker Old Boys soccer pitches and bordering the top end of Glenridding Drive and a tight section of Rakesmoor Lane.

The developers sales pitch is that the £86m development will provide new homes for “executives & apprentices” at the shipyard.

Impressionable hacks on the Evening Snail ran with this headline:

(A.k.a: Buy a massive house so you can enjoy staring at it on the Ring doorbell while you’re toiling away in the Yard to pay it off.)

Developers have effectively told Council planners not to start playing silly buggers.

Any delay in the application, they warn, “could put wider BAE growth/investment at risk” and force new workers to commute into Barrow.”

Hmmm.

It’s long been our understanding that, for many contractors these days, Barrow’s housing market operates on a simple but snobbish rule:

Take the BAE shilling but buy the ‘better’ postcode, and tell your mates that Barra’s just where the payslip comes from.

As recently as May, it was revealed that 29% of the Barrow working population is employed in the yard.

That may explain the ‘wacky races’ of contractors who flee the town every night in their gleaming Audis.

The developers have dangled a fairly juicy carrot: nearly £900,000 in extra Council Tax.

That should catch the eye of cash-strapped Wokemoreland & Farcical Council, where the Lib Dem dictatorship in Kendal are currently found gutting the sofa for loose change.

Many softly-worded letters from the developers have dropped through letter boxes, which is better than NOT engaging.

But some replies coming back from the public to the Council have not shown much in the way of gratitude for the proposed BAE-ville.

Residents’ concerns include:

Traffic and road safety — Rakesmoor Lane & Bank Lane
Infrastructure not coping — Doctors, dentists, schools, buses.
Loss of greenfield land — countryside, hedgerows, wildlife habitat and rural character.
Drainage and water issues — flood risk, surface water, poor water pressure, sewage capacity.
Too many houses — 370 homes seen as overdevelopment, with brownfield sites in Barrow ignored.

Don’t rule out the developers soaking up the backlash and then tabling a smaller scheme to ultimately achieve what they want: Building on farmland.

And how easy is it going to be to sell up in Hawcoat if there are hundreds of spanking new houses to choose from off Rakesmoor Lane?

Barrow’s planning committee will, hopefully, address some of these questions.

It consists of eight councillors: Five Labour. A Hawcoat Tory (Les Hall), a Dalton Tory, and an Independent/Green.