At last night’s meeting we got the Conservatives to agree to a change in the council vision statement. We got them to remove the phrase “several large scale sites”
From:
By 2017 ….. Secure a range of new mixed housing developing on several large-scale sites linked to local infrastructure upgrades and connected to public open space.
to
By 2017 ….. Secure a range of new mixed housing developing on sites linked to local infrastructure upgrades and connected to public open space where possible.
The amendment was moved by Chris Black
We’ll do a more detailed report later….
Great work Chris, the conservatives wouldn’t have changed the wording without a fight, however it is only wording and everything that I can see or hear appears to point to the Tories wanting to build MORE homes than the Government minimum. Think how that would look, Councillors, the defenders of overdevelopment and always able to blame the Government to enforce more and more housing when in the end it would be OUR VERY OWN Council who decided to build more!! I am sure the Echo would love that story. Think long and hard Tory Councillors!!
I see from a report in the Echo on this subject, that there is also a business park planned for “west of the Rochford District”. Maybe they can squeeze it in between the “new town” that will contain the 3600 houses that no other towns in Rochford District want, and the western boundary of Rayleigh.
Also of interest is the timing for the health centre near Asda, the best part of a decade away!
See link below for details:
http://www.echo-news.co.uk/news/local/display.var.2066807.0.plans_for_rochford.php
It would be nice to have an open, caring, listening Council, that makes its decisions in an open transparent way. One that embraces Councillors from other parties (after all you can not tell me they have all of the answers themselves.) Alas not with this Council. Maybe instead of 1800 houses, we may be earmarked for a nice ‘Business Park’, since they have not come out with a location yet. MAY BE ANOTHER ELECTION ISSUE.
Strange that it takes a proposed 9 years to build a health centre, but in the last 9 years they’ve built 3 large housing developments (and a few minor developments), a large NHS centre, a school, a sports centre and an Asda, all in Rawreth Lane.
Surely the local medical facility should have been provided coincident with the housing.
Cart before the horse comes to mind!
ST1, not sure where you got the idea that the health centre was going in near ASDA. That is supposed to be a mix used community area with approximately 5 shops, a nursery and a doctors surgery, from news I gathered, Dr Jayaweera who currently has her practice near DPW was approached to go in there. With flats supposed to be going above the shops, this wouldn’t be big enough for a health centre!
Whether its Rawreth or not, the Council do tend to put development before infrastructure and at some stage that strategy will not come back and bite just them, we the residents, will be the people to lose out and the people to ‘fork out’
Gents,
I think there were three different possibilities of medical facilities going on to the mixed use site:
1) There was certainly a possibility of a satellite clinic of Southend Hospital come here – but the primary care trust were simply much too sloooow. I went to one of their meetings, and they made the District Council look as fast as an Ice Hockey team. However i wonder if there was quite enough space here..
2) Premliminary sketches were drawn up for a major doctors surgery here, which lots of auxiilary facilities. If Asda hadn’t come in, there would have been a good chance of this being built right now, probably with a few small shops.
3) The ‘community use’ building was granted planning permission as part of the supermarket permission, there is room there for a small doctor’s surgery (or rather, a small surgery for a doctor). No reason why it still can’t /won’t be built. after all, Asda got permission for it and I believe they acted in good faith.