The District Council have a really interesting Development Control Committee meeting next week, on Thursday Nov 30th. There are five interesting planning applications, and these are the first two:
1) The site of the old petrol station on the corner of Eastwood Road and Queens Road, Rayleigh. This site has been empty for about a year. Lots of people have asked what’s happening with this land – now we know!
This is an application to demolish the existing buildings on site and build a car wash and motor accessories shop.
The officers are recommending refusal, on the grounds that the siting of the building and the likely noise, are detrimental to the amenity of the house next door, 99 Eastwood Road.
2) Relocation of the Southend United Football Club and development of a 22000 seater stadium plus retail, residential, associated car parking and access works.
Whew. Applications don’t come much bigger than this. This is at the Fossetts Farm site ” just over the border” in Southend The application will be decided by Southend Borough Council but they have asked us for our comments. There’s a separate application for car parking just on our side of the border in Rochford District, and that will come to our committee in December.
There’s a lot to read here. The scheme includes:
Our council officers have clearly looked at this very carefully. Their main concerns appear to be extra traffic along Sutton Road, the impact of the retail units on Rayleigh and Rochford Town centres, the effect on the landscape to the north of the site, and the effect on existing homes in Smithers Chase and Templegate Cottages. But it’s up to the councillors as to what comments we pass on to Southend Council.
We’ll write about the other applications tomorrow night…