From the District Council website:
The Planning Policy Team will be attending Parish Council Meetings across the District in order to give a presentation and answer questions on the current documents out to consultation:
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The Allocations Development Plan Document Discussion and Consultation Document, and the Development Management Discussion and Consultation Document. The consultation for these documents ends at 5pm on April 30th. The dates for the Parish Council meetings are as follows:
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Rayleigh 29-Mar 1930 – Pavilion, KG V Playing Field, RayleighRawreth 07-Apr 1945 – Rawreth Village Hall
Hullbridge 12-Apr 1930 Hullbridge Senior Citizens Centre, Windermere Avenue
Hockley 13-Apr 1930 ? Greensward academy
Canewdon 20-Apr 1930 – Canewdon Village Hall
Are these meetings open to the public too?
If they are ordinary parish council meetings, yes!
the Hockley one is definitely open to the public – it was originally arranged as a HRA meeting but we have been happy to hold it jointly with the parish council. Could be an interesting meeting!
The Hullbridge one is during our monthly meeting so that is open to the public. The feedback I’ve had is that there will be a number of local people attending to voice their anger over the strategy.
Michael thanks. I like the comment ‘a number of local people ….’. I wonder how many the centre can fit in?
So Hawkwell Parish Council does not qualify for a visit?
Ah No, of course not, it comes under Hockley Parish now !!
Don’t worry that Hawkwell will not participate in the Consultation though because I’ve just been helping The Hawkwell Action Group leaflet my Ward.
But RDC will not like the likely response though based on the huge number of objections made over the last 3 years.
Someone at the Council once said that they were going to listen and if residents didn’t like the proposals then we’ll change them and consult again. Trouble is if they listened they didn’t make any real changes apart from the very initial clatter on the numbers for Rayleigh (well done)and a reduction from 330 to 175 in Hawkwell where the reduction was actually transferred to Hockley.
So how does this consultation work on real sites work then? A beauty contest on optional sites in each area and the one with the most votes for wins the pink teddy bear? If it was a sort of referendum that at least would be real listening and local decision making. But it won’t be that. It will be what the Council has probably already decided.
Please excuse me for the sarcasm but I am still getting over both Hawkwell Parish Council and myself being ommitted from the Inquiry Hearings on the Core Strategy which will be conducted in May. More later on this on my web site when I have some more news on this.
Did you know that Iceni (associated to developer at Coombes Farm) has submitted a QC’s Opinion asking for the whole Care Strategy process of Public Examination to be suspended. I understood that the Planning Inspectorate would have responded by now and posted the decision on the Council’s page for the CS Examination. But I can’t see either the Iceni submission or a response there.
Seems to me that the consultation on specific locations recently circulated assumes that the results of the public enquiry on the core strategy are a forgone conclusions .That seems offensive to the Inspector and to areas affected .It surely is logical to publish it after the inspectors report.Is this a case for invalidating
the public enquiry?
Alistir,
It’s probably a case for an ‘unsound’ submission, which those of us who are opposed to many aspects of the Core Strategy are fighting against. Perhaps the Inspector, Miss Laura Graham, should be made aware of this via the Programme Officer Lissi Higby.
It just seems to me that RDC have made a complete mess of this. If they had conducted this with openness and transparency I think we would be a lot more informed and further down the line. I still feel we have not explored all the possibilities of using brown field sites, uninhabited housing and small sustainable plots of land. We are just giving the building industry what they want rather than what is good for us and our environment. Of course it makes financial sense, for the builders, to build large developments, but not for us. They will accrue large profits through economy of scale but what will do for us? I have real issues with what this development will do for our quality of life, not just for Rayleigh but for all areas of Rochford District. When we needed a bit of creative thinking, we have been let down.