Chris Black writes:
I’ve put the following comment on the District Council website this evening.
I wish to formally OBJECT to the allocation of 1050 homes in Rawreth, for the following reasons:
1. The document is vague about what is intended for Rawreth. However 650 homes are proposed North of London road, PLUS 200 on the Rawreth Industrial Estate (not mentioned!) plus about 200 more within Rawreth’s boundaries as part “SW Hullbridge ” .This means 950 -1050 homes to be built in Rawreth Parish. Rawreth has 373 dwellings -these proposals increase the population by about 270 percent. The documents states ” our approach to the location of housing development can be described as a balanced strategy.” For Rawreth, things are vastly unbalanced!
2. The land “North of London Road” is an area of prime farmland – precisely the type of untouched Green Belt that should be left alone. Once development encroaches onto this land, there is no physical barrier to prevent the whole lot from being built on. Judging by previous experience, this would simply be a poorly-planned urban sprawl.
3. In the evidence base on the Rochford DC website, reference is made to having a ‘strategic buffer’ between Rayleigh and Rawreth, and the farmland in question here should BE in that buffer, not used as development land.
4. On page 26 of the council consultation document, Rawreth is in the ‘fourth tier’ of settlements – where additional development is considered unsustainable. The only way that Rochford DC can justify building here is by actually ignoring Rawreth’s existence as a settlement.
5. The emphasis elsewhere in the document is on combining new housing with needed improvements in infrastructure, or with providing new housing to support local shops and schools. There is nothing in these proposals that would benefit Rawreth – just additional traffic and a degradation to the rural environment. There are no Rawreth shops to benefit from new housing, the village school is secure and there is recent affordable housing at the Park School Site. The council is firmly downplaying the ideas of any major new community benefits from this housing , such as a major park or a swimming pool.
6. The appendix to the report shows that a new primary school would be needed if these 850 homes were built. However , nearly every primary school in Rayleigh is going to have spare capacity in 2012. (According to the County Council’s “Essex School Organisation Plan 2007-2012 , available from the County Council’s website). It’s very poor planning to spend millions on a new primary school when overall numbers of schoolchildren are decreasing. Unless the County Council want to do a ‘Park School’ and close an existing primary school to build houses on it???
7. The document proposes having have a Polyclinic built here. This would include much-needed facilities, but local GPs would be dragooned into moving down there. If this happens then a lot of Rayleigh residents would be inconvenienced by having to go to Rawreth to see their GP. However I suspect that there will be such opposition that the idea will be abandoned, leaving someone like Tesco to move in, further harming the Town Centre. It’s better to build a smaller unit for blood testing, physio and x-rays in the centre of Rayleigh and leave the GPs where they are.
8. There are other sites in the district – and in Rayleigh and Rawreth in particular – that haven’t been fully considered by the District Council. They are shown in the Call to Sites document. If a smaller brownfield site in the centre of Rawreth was chosen, Rawreth would still be taking more than it’s “fair share” of housing but there it would act as a focus for the village and provide more community cohesion. One or two smaller sites in the centre of Rawreth would also have easy access to Battlesbridge station (so
avoiding excess pressure on Rayleigh Station)9. The overall amount of housing for Rayleigh and Rawreth is reasonable. However for the reasons above I oppose the allocation for ‘North of London Road’. Locating 850 new homes here would be detrimental to community cohesion. Residents here would not feel part of either Rayleigh or Rawreth. The new health facilities should be built in the centre of Rayleigh, to help cement the town centre as a community hub when retail uses are relentlessly declining.
You can make your own comments on the council website as well…. just click here.
I wish people would STOP calling Coppice Gate “The Park School Site” – There have been people living on this development for over 3 years, wth development starting four years ago. Park School closed years ago. I do not live on a school site, I live on a development, it is called Coppice Gate!
It may be, that people who have lived in Rayleigh for many years know that a school once stood on this site, but what once stood on the site of your homes? Do you still refer to that area as “the industrial estate”, “the wood yard”, etc etc. Move on, and start calling this area of Rayleigh by the name it holds today.
I take the point Corey!
Mind you Coppicegate is a commercial name rather than an official name.
As a development site the whold area – homes, Asda , school, leisure centre , school and pitches was the Park School site.
As a location perhaps we should now call it the Priory Chase area?
From today’s Echo an article on roads. This seems to be the first admission by a Tory Cllr that roads could be a problem!
Minister happy to see Rochford roads
12:20pm Monday 1st December 2008
A GOVERNMENT minister has promised to take a closer look at the state of south Essex roads after concerns were raised with him by a councillor.
Paul Clark MP, a junior transport minister, told Rochford district councillor James Cottis he would visit the county to examine its roads following a chance meeting at the Thames Gateway Forum in East London.
Mr Cottis described Mr Clark’s reaction as startled when he was told it would take about £1billion to tackle congestion and resurfacing problems.
He said: “I invited him to say what he was going to do about the roads in south Essex.
“He said he would be happy to come and take a look.
“If we can get a Government minister down to look at the roads, then hopefully we can get something done about the situation.
“Mind you, he was certainly a bit startled when I told him how much it might cost.”
I agree with Chris.There are no signs at the entrance indicating it is Coppice Gate. Perhaps the road should have been called Coppice Way rather than Priory Chase as there is no priory in it.
Coppice Gate may have been the marketting name given by Wimpeys, BUT it is the name that most of us on here use. I would never even think to say Priory Chase development, because I don’t live on Priory Chase.
I agree with you on the naming of the road Greenbelt, there is no Temple either! But when you consider that the “experts” in planning thought it would be OK to have 80 Temple Way next door to 82 Priory Chase and next door but one to 80 Priory Chase, are you really surprised that inappropriate names would be used?
So what was the marketing name for the Downall Park Way estate? I moved hear 2 years after the estate was finished, so never saw any of the marketing blurb. I think I’ve also heard it called the Sweyne Park estate, but that could also apply to the development on the west side of the park (Victoria Grange?).
The Cathedral Estate would not be far wrong, given all the new roads are named after Cathedral cities.
Is this where the Temple Way and Priory Chase names come from, a continuation of the religious building theme?
I don’t remember the marketing name for Downhall Park Way (maybe there wasn’t one).
The first roads named were Norwich and Lincoln – I thought maybe they were naming the roads after Eastern England Football Clubs.
But instead of Grimsby Close and Peterborough Crescent we got Bristol and Truro……
I know some people refer to the Teignmouth Drive / Exmouth Drive area as the Devonshire Estate, which makes sense…
That thread deteriorated a bit quickly didn’t it? I’d have expected on a site like this that the merits of the content of the original post would have been what was discussed rather than what has transpired, with the exception of Brians comments.
Getting back to the original theme, last night was a great example of how bad things get in the district when traffic flow is disrupted. Rawreth Lane was queueing traffic for it’s entire length, the A1245 was a 1st gear crawl all the way south to the Carpenter’s Arms. Essex FM were saying that Hambro Hill, Hullbridge Road and Watery Lane were all at a standstill, and a lot of cars were going along London Road/129.
If you add the extra housing both in the Rawreth area, and the other villages of Hockley, Hullbridge Hawkwell etc., the area will grind to a halt, and on a more regular basis, not just when there is some kind of incident.
It took me around 45 minutes to get from home to the Rayleigh Wier last night.
Was last night’s problem caused by some new roadworks, and is this what we have to expect for the foreseeable future? I take it it is related to the gas mains upgrade.
Thanks Bigbry for the moral support – it does feel a bit as if we are all fiddling whilst the city burns!
I would also encourage readers to take a wider perspective of the plans for a 10% increase in housing. At the moment, for understandable reasons, everyone is being parochial but this simply:
– means trying to move the traffic jam a short distance down the road
– enabling RDC to “divide and conquer”.
The number of responses on the RDC web-site is very disappointing and seem to come mainly from Rawreth and Hockley/Hawkwell. I’m not sure that people in places like Rochford actually know what is in store for them. West Rochford is down for 1170 houses all emptying on to the Ashingdon Road and needing to cross the railway to get almost anywhere (unless they use Rawreth or Watery Lane!). That should be fun!
The current proposals have not been costed and I do not believe that a system of “Standard Charges” will be anywhere near enough to pay for infrastructure improvements across the entire district. Hence we will all suffer regardless of the precise details/number of houses in our patch. We just have to focus developments and relevant infrastructure improvements to minimise the impact for everyone.
Please, please, lets have a constructive debate on realistic options and do encourage people to write to RDC.
Yes, most people (especially outside Rawreth and Hawkwell ) don’t know ,or don’t think it’s worthwhile even responding…
A resident has kindly sent me a newspaper report:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2008/nov/16/agriculture-food-shortages-climate-change
detailing a City University, London study which recommends that “productive [farm] land will have to be protected from development” in order to protect future domestic food sources.
Another reason for debating the whole concept of the Core Strategy.
The non-technical summary of the over-due Sustainability Report can be viewed at http://www.rochford.gov.uk/CMISWebPublic/Meeting.aspx?meetingID=5578.
It is not yet formally part of the LDF evidence base as there has to be a time lapse between a report being signed off by a Portfolio Holder and it becoming a formal document. The full report will follow once it has been finalised.
ST1 the problem with the traffic last night and this morning was a gas leak at the budgens mini-roundabout in Hullbridge and some very poorly co-ordinated 3 way traffic lights. It’s OK tonight although there is still a strong smell of gas and there’s lots of holes all around the area so no promises for the next few days.
It was certainly a one-off and I hope it never happens again (my wife took 2 hours longer than normal to get home from Basildon!).
(Un)fortunately (?) it’s therefore not an example of what it may be like when/if the area is developed.
Back to Corey’s original point, I call the development the Park School Site, as I remember the School being built before it opened in 1980. Can’t remember what was there before though.
Maybe it should be called “Asda Gate” ?
As for the the name of the Park, I call it Sweyne Park as it’s near Sweyne Park School and that’s the name of the Council Ward, but the road is called Downhall Park Way?
Last nights problems on Rawreth Lane was certainly not a one off – in the 3 years I have lived in Rayleigh I have been caught in traffic more than half a dozen times. It may not be a frequent occurance, but is very frustrating when it does happen and takes half an hour to get from the A1245 to Priory Chase, as it did last night.
Leaving my house last night at 6:50 was surprised to see Rawreth Lane still at a standstill, London Road at a standstill and traffic backing up on the A127 Southend bound. If one gas leak causes this much traffic chaos it is a clear indication that the road infrastructure is insufficient to cope with the volume of traffic on our roads.
I agree the gas leak in Hullbridge may be a bit of a one off, but as Corey says, traffic jams in Rawreth Lane are more common than they used to be. A lot of it does depend on whether there is an incident elswhere in the district, causing people to use Rawreth lane as an alternative, but these things are a good indication that the road infrastructure is very close to capacity with the current level of development.
It is encouraging that I have read reports about improvements to the A127 junctions and Sadlers Farm, they’re much needed. However, once past the Rayleigh Weir, what then? All we’re being offered is a reduced speed limit an new speed cameras, so not much radical thinking there then!
In reply to ST1 and Chris, I moved onto the Downhall Park Way estate in 1993 and the paperwork I was given then described it as the Castle Reach development.
On a more important note, I have added my objections to the development proposals onto the RDC website and hope many more
residents will.