“You Don’t Know What You’re Doing!” “You Don’t Know What You’re Doing!”

Have you ever been at a football match when the referee makes a big mistake, or a manager gets his tactics embarrassingly wrong? The crowd start singing “You don’t know what you’re doing”. We have a pretty similar situation now with Watery Lane.

The District Council are planning 500 houses near Watery Lane. Even though some opposition councillors voted against this , at least we were given the promise that Watery Lane would be improved. But that promise seems to be going out the window! As Hullbridge Green Councillor Michael Hoy points out here the County Council officially aren’t interested in improving Watery Lane!

In their response to the District Council proposals the County Council have said here :


Paragraph 3.178 should be amended to note that highway improvements would focus on the strategic network, which includes the junction of Hullbridge Road/ Watery Lane. Watery Lane is not part of the strategic network and the reference to improvements should be deleted.

Now you can argue about whether Watery Lane is a country lane, or part of the strategic road network. But that doesn’t really matter. What matters is that when it’s closed, it causes big problems. So with 500 houses coming it needs improving.

Michael Hoy sums things up pretty well:

“To us it is amazing that anyone from the County Council could state that improvements to Watery Lane should be deleted from the Allocations Document. Everyone who has lived with this road being closed for 3 months would disagree with the assessment that it is not strategic.

This is yet another example of how out of touch Essex County Council are with this part of Essex, they seem to believe that everyone to the south of Chelmsford is unimportant and would appear to have great trouble even locating us on a map, let alone in person.

It took 3 months of relentless campaigning and bad publicity before we got any action out of the County Council on Watery Lane and even then it was only to do the standard maintenance work that they had apparently been neglecting for the previous 9 months. They are now saying that even with a further 500 houses to be built in ?Hullbridge? no work is needed on Watery Lane as it is not part of the Strategic Network. We will obviously be opposing this view forcibly with the Council.”

And if you haven’t heard fans chanting “You Don’t Know What You’re Doing!” this is what it sounds like:

About the author, admin

  • I don’t pretend to know anything about procedures in relation to Council, but is this not grounds for taking the whole issue of the houses back to Council to be looked at again. If Watery Lane is not to be improved, for whatever reason, then surely this makes the 500 houses insupportable from the point of view of infrastructure, which to me means that the Council should look at the whole proposal again in the light of new information. Looks suspiciously like someone is trying to pull a fast one. Promise improvements to get the housing agreed, then go back on the promise at a later date.

  • I think you are right Christine, this does make the whole thing unsustainable. But it can’t come directly back to the council yet, it’s now with a government inspector.

  • {"email":"Email address invalid","url":"Website address invalid","required":"Required field missing"}
    >