It was a long Development Committee meeting at the District Council tonight.
For one thing, there was an electrical problem, so we were 21 minutes late starting.
The first application up was for 101 new homes at the old eON site in London Road, Rayleigh. The ward councillors, Toby Mountain and Joan Mockford spoke first. One of their main concerns was that there wasn’t enough affordable housing guaranteed – possibly only 25% of the new homes would be affordable, when our policy was to seek 35%. But they were also concerned no funds were being provided by Bellway Homes for extra secondary school places. They were especially perturbed that County Highways were asking for ?25000 to improve nearby bus stops when there wasn’t a bus route passing by this development. They said they would prefer money be spent on a pedestrian crossing across London Road instead. They would also have liked to see some proper play equipment inside the scheme.
Chris Black raised the issue of the nursery school closing down, when our new planning policy CLT6 said “Community facilities will be safeguarded from development….”. He said that he would vote against the scheme because of this – it set an appalling precedent. He was supported on this by Councillor Ian Ward who said it left ‘a vast gaping hole’ in local provision.
Ron Oatham pressed the officers once again on whether this housing could be included in the 550 homes intended for “Land North of London Road”. He was told “No”.
Chris Lumley raised traffic issues , saying that the eON traffic was spread out throughout the day because of shift work and didn’t have much impact on the busiest day of the week– Saturday. These new homes would have a traffic impact on Saturdays.
Councillors Mike Steptoe and Phil Capon asked questions about the nitty-gritty details of the layout – how would recycling lorries and delivery trucks etc. manage?
Hullbridge councillor Michael Hoy supported the ward councillors, especially on affordable housing. Great Wakering Councillor Colin Seagers was also concerned about the amount of affordable housing, he stressed that when you looked at the total number of bedrooms that were in the affordable part of the scheme, it was well below 25%.
When it came to the crunch Toby Mountain moved refusal on the issues of affordable housing , local amenities and the loss of the nursery school. He was seconded by Joan Mockford. They won the vote 19 to 5, incidentally getting the support of all 4 Lib Dem councillors.
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The other big application of the night was for the car wash in front of Rayleigh Station. We had another long discussion on this one.
In the end the ward councillors Mavis Webster and ‘new boy’ John Griffin had a motion for refusal on the grounds of the visual appearance of the proposed car wash.
Lots of councillors spoke, with Councillor Pat Aves seriously concerned about the potential impact on other drivers visiting the station to drop off/ pick up people. Chris Black expressed doubts about the pricing of the car park if there were so many empty spaces. Chris Lumley said we were ‘taking a gamble’ if we passed this. However chairman of the committee Simon Smith was worried that councillors were getting involved in issues that weren’t our responsibility.
Chris Black and June Lumley added a second reason for refusal – on the impact on other station users that could be caused by having a car wash here. (This reason had more or less originally been included by Mavis Webster but taken out at the suggestion of Councillor Keith Hudson.) The application was then refused, with all 4 Lib Dem councillors voting for the refusal.
For clarification regarding my comments on the Eon site affordable housing offered by Bellway, there were 0/13 of 4 bed houses and 0/14 of 5 bed houses, but 10/10 of 2 bed apartments, 5/20 of 2 bed houses, and 10/44 of 3 bed houses. Therefore it did appear that the restriction of affordable homes grouped in one enclave/ghetto on the development, rather than ‘pepper-potting’ around sites as required by RDC, was an unsubtle attempt to restrict the mix offered to the smallest and lowest value homes.
In total that was only 60/314 bedrooms in total = 19% in bedrooms alone, and certainly even worse in bed spaces (as larger homes almost invariably have more doubles) and also in total value terms, which is far below even the 25% affordable homes apparently offered expressed in simple dwellings terms.
Given that total value of the affordable homes offered relative to that of the free market percentage is a key determinant in assessing viability of an affordable homes percentage that RDC can demand/expect of any development site, it would not be right to ignore the composition of any affordable home offering expressed solely in percentage of dwellings. Perhaps we should see if the review of the Core Strategy can or should address that anomaly, else larger families will never have provision of the larger sized homes necessary for them.
Thank you for the clarification Colin – the aim was to give the public an understanding of the meeting – especially in the absence of the press. Hopefully giving a fair sense of what councillors were thinking.