Hawkwell Councillor John Mason has an interesting piece on his website here about the “Colonnade” proposal, which is a commercial consortium’s idea of apparently 10,000 new homes in Southend and 10,000 in Rochford. You can leave comments on John’s site if you wish to…
Rochford District Council has already come out against this proposal, for pretty obviously reasons – we don’t have the infrastructure for 4,000 homes, let alone 10,000. But these people seem pretty serious about the idea, so we need to be aware and think about it.
What we don’t want to do is break our hearts finding a dozen medium-sized sites for our housing, and then see in a few years Colonnade win permission off the government for 10,000 more homes.
Chris, you have hit the nail on the head.
EERA/ECC are already discussing future allocations with RDC and I’ve been given figures of 7-10,000 extra houses! Cllr Keith Hudson says he will resists but will he be successful?
Major new roads to the east of Rochford are only likely to have one outcome – more houses!
The current core strategy is incomplete and unsustainable. Neither does it provide for the future.
RDC has refused to take a strategic view in the core strategy and have not consulted on the option of a single, strategic site with appropriate infrastructure. Their short-sighted approach is likely to cost us all dearly.
I hope for a good turnout at the WAC on 25th but Chris was correct in an earlier posting when he said that Hullbridge was not mentioned at the CAC. There were also only about 8-10 ‘locals’ at the EAC in Rochford, so I fear that much of the district has not woken up yet.
Please encourage your friends and neighbours to write to RDC before 17 December.