The Government is forcing Rochford District Council to find sites for another 3000 new homes over the next 15 to 20 years.
As most of the recent developments have been in OUR area, we are hoping that the District Council will act more fairly in future, and not just dump everything in West Rayleigh and Rawreth. However, the signs are not good.
The council committee that will allocate sites is meeting next Tuesday evening, One of the ideas they are considering is putting all of the new housing in one area ? and when they mean ?one area? they really mean in the Rawreth area. Ron Oatham is our member of this committee, and some of the Conservatives on it have already told him that they don?t want anything built around the Canewdon /Wakering area, but that there?s lots of space in Rawreth. This meeting won’t make any final decisions, but it is still an important one.
As your ward councillors, all we want to see is some fairness . We?ve had too much development in our patch, with very little in the way of extra facilities. The new housing should be spread fairly.
The meeting will be at the Civic Suite , Rayleigh next Tuesday night at 7.30 pm in Commitee Room 4. It?s opposite where ?Amigo?s ? Restaurant used to be .
You might find it interesting to come along…
UPDATE: The small public gallery was nearly full up for this meeting – there were only 3 empty seats. As a result, Ron noticed that the standard of debate was a bit higher than last time! Some Tory Councillors ,such as Sue Harper from Rochford, asked a lot of questions whilst other Tories stayed almost silent. With the public watching, there were no suggestions from the Conservatives to dump all the development in Rawreth, or indeed anywhere else. However, the council is going to informal public consultation in the autumn about what option it should take:
– should all the extra housing be concentrated in one place?
– should it be put in medium size pieces around Rayleigh, Rochford and Hockley?
– should we keep the Green Belt boundaries unchanged and squeeze in the extra housing onto existing streets?
So there is a still a fair chance that the council will stick all the housingt in one place, and in that situation they could very well pick Rawreth as the site.