Rawreth Parish Council’s Response In Full

“RE: Planning Application 14/00627/OUT
Countryside Properties (UK) Ltd
Land North of London Road, and South of Rawreth Lane and West of Rawreth Industrial
Estate, Rawreth Lane, Rawreth Essex

Further to your letter, enclosing a copy of the submitted plans and applications in respect
of the proposals detailed above, Council have the following comments and observations to make.
The Council still have very grave concerns about the effect that developing the land will
have on an area that already suffers from flooding. Whilst Council note that balancing
ponds, basins and swails have been accounted for, the Parish of Rawreth is very unique
in that it suffers from fluvial, tidal and surface water flooding and the Council does not
feel that adequate notice has been taken of these factors and the correct information
gathered and analysed. The Parish has suffered from the ?one in a hundred years?
event three times within eighteen months, however the advice given to the Developer
from the Environment Agency asks them to work on the one in a hundred years scenario
only, this is proven to be ineffective, vast areas of the Parish are cut off for days when
these events happen, properties flood, roads are impassable and lives are devastated
through loss and fear of it happening again.

The Council would like to re-emphasise that the Rawreth Brook is influenced by tidal flow
and this is a major contributory factor to flooding in the Parish.

The Council would also like to re-emphasise that in addition to water from the immediate
area draining into Rawreth Brook, water from Bowers Gifford also drains into it via the
Benfleet Brook, a very significant factor that has been overlooked.

The Council are concerned that all the technical work is being done upstream of the site,
but none is planned for downstream, Council believe this is because it is assumed there
is no adverse effect downstream which is totally unacceptable and incorrect

The Council also considers that the roads and infrastructure in the Rawreth area are
completely inadequate to accommodate this proposed development as they are already full to capacity .

The A127, A1245, A129 London Road, Rawreth Lane and Watery Lane
just cannot take any more traffic and the proposed development will increase traffic to a
completely unsustainable level. On numerous occasions this year and last year incidents
within and on the outskirts of the Parish have brought traffic to a standstill for hours along
London Road, Rawreth Lane, Watery Lane/Beeches Road and the Hullbridge Road. It
took some residents 1 1?4 hours to proceed along Rawreth Lane and into Hullbridge ?
a distance of 1 1?2 miles. We strongly recommend that an independent Traffic Survey
and assessment should be done before any approval of this scheme. Without a long
term solution to existing transport needs then this and any new developments are
unsustainable.

Council considers access to the site to be inadequate too, the access point is to and
from Rawreth Lane, a road already over congested. Failure to improve the infrastructure
at the access point and on surrounding roads will only add to the problems already
experienced, the overall traffic flow to and from the development means congested
roads will not improve and existing residents will only be inconvenienced more which
Council doesn?t consider acceptable. It is assumed by Countryside that most traffic will
exit via London Road and that is where they will spend money to ?improve? traffic flow
there will be very little improvement to Rawreth Lane, or the Rawreth Lane Hullbridge
Road junction. There appears to be too much reliance on the Hullbridge Development
financing any improvement on Rawreth Lane.

Below is a copy of a traffic survey undertaken by Rawreth Parish Council in 2010, this
survey is woefully out of date as traffic has increased since it was taken, but it still gives
an idea of the traffic volumes that use Rawreth Lane and Beeches Road on a daily basis.

Rawreth Parish Council – Traffic Survey 25th March 2010.
Location Beeches Road, held between the hours of 7am and 7pm.
WESTBOUND EASTBOUND
7-9 AM 732 333
9-11 AM 250 322
11-12 PM 130 147
12- 1 PM 131 140
1-2 PM 128 150
2-3 PM 118 195
3-4 PM 120 247
4-5 PM 131 384
5-6 PM 171 595
6-7 PM 111 335
2022 2848

The odd statistic from the figures show eastbound traffic is running at about 220 vehicles
per hour whilst westbound is averaging at only about 170 vehicles per hour . This may
be because of the congestion on Rawreth lane encourages more cars going east .
There were considerable numbers of overweight vehicles mainly large transit type with
double wheels or long wheelbase.

Rawreth Parish Council – Traffic Survey 25th March 2010.
Location Rawreth Lane, Recreation car park, held between the hours of 7am and
7pm.
Easterly Westerly
7 – 8am – 460 7 – 8 am – 800
8 – 9 – 565 8 – 9 – 910
9 – 10 – 515 9 – 10 – 605
10 – 11 – 457 10 – 11 – 496
11 – 12 – 518 11 – 12 – 520
12 – 1 – 460 12 – 1 – 515
1 – 2 – 550 1 – 2 – 495
2 – 3 – 607 2 – 3 – 526
3-4 740 3 – 4 – 555
4 – 5 – 821 4 – 5 – 594
5 – 6 – 801 5 – 6 – 665
6 – 7pm – 685 6 – 7pm – 536
Total 7179 7217

Council also considers the provision for a primary school to be unnecessary given that
the Parish School of St Nicholas could easily be extended to accommodate any future
need. Council feel that the space allocated for a school would be better utilised as a
Doctors surgery as the existing surgeries in the area will not cope with a development of
this size.

The Council are extremely concerned that inadequate risk assessments and calculations
have been undertaken with regards to flooding, and the effect of flooding on the Parish
and surrounding area that together with the lack of assessment with regards to increased
traffic movement and flow leaves the Council in no doubt that there will be extreme lack
of infrastructure to support this development.
Yours sincerely
Hayley Bloomfield
Clerk to Rawreth Parish Council ”