My counter is now set to read completed page views and is showing nearly 2000 per week (mostly this page)

Notice the new button above, the Fairfield Partnership now has a web-site presenting their vision for the future of “Elsenham a New Market Town”. However all is not as it seems. Go there and open up the link to “documents” where you will find among other things, an analysis of the road transport scenario. Now many of you will recall how back in 1988 we beat off Crest Homes PLC who appealed against the refusal to build on the land between the playing field and Alsa Wood. A key issue was road access. The judge actually visited Grove Hill at various times of day and ruled that the extra resident’s vehicles would increase congestion beyond reasonable safety levels and the appeal was thrown out. The extra housing has now been built anyway by a hotch-pot of individual in-fill builds, and the judge was right, Grove hill is now very bad. The traffic lights restricting flow to one direction at a time helped with safety but obviously further halved the flow rate. The Fairfield Partnership used the WSP group, a well known traffic analysis consulting firm who have used NTM (National Transport Model) figures which gives a prediction that road traffic on Stansted Road can almost treble into its spare capacity! Now this quite obvious nonsense should get the whole proposal thrown out but we are getting suspicious that the whole process is becoming political.

Looking more deeply into the “Fairfield vision” and discussing it with one of their liaison people reveals that the vision is almost exactly the Lib-Dem’s option 3. It is for an initial 3,000 houses. When I said “but the UDC’s preferred option is 4,200” the response was that the land controlled by Fairfield won’t go to that level. So to build the Tory option 4’s 4,200 houses the build will go beyond the “vision” and use even more land further north, believed to be controlled by Crest Homes PLC.

Various people have now tried to clarify the matter of the Government driven eco-town and the various mail-shots we have now had, have not helped. The most plausible version we currently have is that if we take an eco-town, no further developments will be put our way but any allocation made prior to the eco-town deliberations will stand. We therefore think that a plus 4200 Greater Elsenham will in all probability be followed by an eco-town.

Now go look in “Google Earth” the land currently controlled by Fairfield makes a sensible parcel bounded by the road linking Old Mead Road to Henham but going further north into Crest territory is opening up another parcel which could take a 5,000 home eco-town effectively joining Henham to Little Henham. Now this will “tick more Government boxes” by not needing to expand on major existing settlements because there is room to leave both Henham and Little Henham isolated (for now). As to road access it can have its own slips off the motorway and access Greater Elsenham’s main road down to Bishops Stortford, the Airport and the new A120.

As to jobs for this lot BAA G2 can fix that!

Now for some history, elsewhere on this web-site you will find the Buchanan Map, just like David Lock, Colin Buchanan is a Government consultant and they did an analysis back in the days of the Government White Paper on Transport. They looked at what existed, what was in build and planning, then added the socio-economic factors and constructed a forecast for the M11 and A120 corridors crossing at an International Hub Airport. If you go back and look at that map now you will see all the bits slotting into place.

VILLAGE FETE

For once the weather was excellent and there was a good turnout for a very good display. The Parish Council had plenty of business with petition signing and letter writing but if we are to have any effect at all we must all write in. The folk living near the other possible eco-sites are all doing the same so if it comes down to a simple tally of objections we could easily lose. Your letter counts, if you leave it to “the others” we will all lose, because “the others” will just be the hard core and there just aren’t enough of us to do it without total public active support.

A lot of people I spoke to thought they had done their bit, they hadn’t, the original campaign they helped with was against the options 2, 3 & 4 this is different its an additional 5,000 houses and different people doing it to us. The eco-town is the Government the “options” were Uttlesford. Put it all together and you are looking at a total of 9,000 new homes and to create local jobs for that lot you need a major employer such as an expanding airport!

I don’t think everybody fully understands the threat we face. I estimate that starting with the drains and other services, then the concrete for the footings then the bricks, the insulation blocks, flooring, roof trusses and tiles. Then the wiring contractors and the plumbers, kitchen fitters and decorators and finally removal vans. I am estimating around 10 HGV loads of stuff per house. Looking at the Government’s intended timescale the new roads should be getting under way now but they are not even in a planning stage. The first phases of the building of the new town will therefore start long before any new roads are ready. If we are hit with both option 4 and the eco-town that will be around 90,000 HGV round trips on roads that are only marginally coping now. Unless you work from home and don’t need to go shopping you will have problems and even if you don’t join the melee there will be the noise and pollution. Most of this traffic will have to come through Elsenham Cross but the well known Sat-Nav problems will have HGVs coming at us from all directions.

YOU HAVE UNTIL 30^th JUNE TO GET YOUR OBJECTION LETTERS IN, after that you will only have yourself to blame.

The response to the public consultation has basically blown Uttlesford’s “Limehouse” system. The people transcribing the letters into the database have been completely swamped so the whole programme has been put back. Do not relax however, keep an eye on the database so that when your contribution eventually goes on you check it to be sure its what you wrote.

I am keeping the old stuff below for a little longer lest we forget.

Consultation?

Concentrating development in a proposed new settlement north east of Elsenham was confirmed as the preferred option for new housing in the district at the Environment Committee on Tuesday 30 October.

This is to be found on the Uttlesford Web-site. For faster access I have copied the file, click “minutes30th” below (I have added the public statements to the end of the document). It will open as a word document.

I have also copied the consultation page click below to see that too. We must respond en-mass to have any effect at all. An action group is forming, watch this space for details as I get them.

The consultation document itself is not yet available, its timing to clash with Xmas is probably deliberate!

The Government

Don’t blame the Developers the Government is behind the drive to build more houses. The East of England Regional Assembly at present does not support the East of England Plan which lies behind Uttlesford’s options but the government is pressing ahead regardless. Click below for the BBC report.

According to their web-site the reason the assembly no longer supports the Plan was the lack of government funding for the infrastructure. I have since been back to the EERA web-site and cannot find the above statement again but to view the East of England Plan you must now visit the government’s own web-site. (click below)

The two Parish Councils of Henham and Elsenham met the other day to discuss and co-ordinate our reactions to the threats posed to our respective villages by the proposed development options. At that meeting a map was circulating that showed more than the concentric rings shown on the Fairfield Partnership’s recent leaflet. It took a lot of tracking down but with a great deal of help from Camargue (For the Fairfield Partnership) it was traced to 2005 where it had been produced to promote the new settlement at Elsenham to those producing the East of England Plan. It is not a current document but it does explain how the option would appear attractive to the authors of the East of England Plan. However you cannot take bits of it out of context. It included road and bridge building without which it can’t work. Click below for both the current and the old Fairfield documents.
Geof

Roads.

The roads situation just got more complicated. Some households have received copies of Highways Agency leaflets recycled from the initial consultations. The covering letter advises that subject to public consultation some previously discounted options are now back on the active list. The key one is the M11 A120 link. It is shown as running between a new junction just under 2 miles north of the Stansted Road bridge over the M11 and the junction where the old and new A120 cross to the west of Dunmow. Click below for map.

NEW SETTLEMENT

In the past it has been Elsenham Parish Council versus the Developers but this time it is different. The Government, working down through the East of England Regional Assembly (EERA) has identified a need for a huge number of new homes. EERA has then apportioned those developments around the Districts and identified possible locations for them. Uttlesford gets a share. Some have already been placed but 4000 remain. Due to its road, rail and airport access Elsenham has always been on the options lists but at the last Parish Council Meeting it was revealed that Uttlesford’s preferred option places 3000 of those homes here.

The Fairfield Partnership were very quick off the mark because they were monitoring EERA’s East of England Plan as was I. They have published a pamphlet outlining the case but they write it 3000+. The reason for the plus is that the 3000 figure is for 2012 and there is a much larger EERA figure for 2021. The proposal shows the development as concentric circles centred on the station and shaded lighter further out towards Henham. Looking at the current footprint of Elsenham’s 1000 homes then reducing it because modern housing density is much higher and also noting that under Uttlesford’s rules 40% will have to be “affordable” and thus be denser still. The inner rings represent the 3000. The final phases of the overall development will reach down to the Henham road. It will also swallow up Old Mead Lane and reach across to Mill Road.

Where this all gets silly is that we have been told that at 3000 a new settlement will not require any new roads! All those of you who have spent time in our various bottlenecks please imagine traffic rising to four times its current level with no budget for improvements!

The Parish Council has already written to Uttlesford lodging our objections but the way planning issues are resolved now we could easily lose. On normal Planning issues we expect Uttlesford to back us up but this time we will be running counter to their preferred “Spatial Strategy”. Were we to somehow overcome this “no new road needed” nonsense so that Uttlesford did back us then the moment a formal proposal was rejected the matter would pass to the Planning Inspectorate where a judgement would be handed down on behalf of the Secretary of State, the same Secretary of State that handed EERA its targets for new homes in the East of England. I think we are doomed unless we can come up with something really creative.

For details on the current proposal click on “Fairfield” below, for the wider information click on “future developments” the link to the East of England Regional Assembly is hard work but worth it and puts the developments into context.
Geof

One Possibility.

To start the pot boiling I offer the following. Consider the building of a new house in terms of lorry loads of materials. Starting with the concrete for the footings and drives, plus bricks and blocks, then plasterboard and flooring, then pre-assembled roof trusses and a load of roofing tiles. Various deliveries of timber and part assembled kitchens and bathrooms with a prolonged sequence of visits from electrical and plumbing contractors. Up front of all this the ground work will need all the utility hardware. Finally pantechnicons to move the buyers in. I estimate up to 10 HGVs per home assuming the affordable ones are built in multiples. Every one of these HGVs will have to make a return trip and so meet others coming the other way.

The original target for a new settlement was 2012 but the current Uttlesford date is 2024 for the new settlement’s completion. The Core Strategy will not be formally adopted until 2009 so the building works will probably be spread over 15 years roughly 200 a year. At roughly 4 a week that’s 40 loads or 80 trips a week going on for 15 years. Unless we can successfully prohibit parking in Station Road, traffic jams are going to be frequent. This will be very difficult as its not a “B” road its domestic.

Just as many residents finding themselves close to major building works have done in the past we should be able to bar site traffic. The means by which this is achieved could be a Court Order on the developer or a similar facility via the Department for Transport.
Geof

E-MAIL ME

IT TURNS OUT THAT SPAM ADDRESS HARVESTERS ARE DUMB ROBOTS. TO BEAT THEM I GIVE MY ADDRESS  BUT NOT IN A FORM THAT THE ROBOTS WILL BE ABLE TO SEE. IN THE FOLLOWING SIMPLY SUBSTITUTE @ FOR AT AND IT WILL REACH ME.

I WILL ACCEPT MOST THINGS FOR INCLUSION IN THE WEB-SITE, THE SERVER CONTRACT IS A PROFESSIONAL PACKAGE SO WE HAVE HUGE BANDWIDTH AND I CAN HANDLE JUST ABOUT ANY FORMAT OR MEDIA, HOWEVER DUE TO PRESSURE OF WORK I CAN NO LONGER TAKE MATERIAL THAT I HAVE TO RETYPE. NB SCANNED WORK TAKES FOREVER TO DOWNLOAD, WORD PROCESSOR STUFF PLEASE VIA ELECTRONIC MEDIA OF SOME SORT. E-MAIL (PREFERRED),  FLOPPY, ZIP, CD-R,  DVD-R, FLASH, USB MASS STORAGE - ANY. I CAN OPEN MOST WORD PROCESSOR FILE TYPES PLUS ACROBAT FILES PLUS ALL COMMON GRAPHICS AND PHOTO FILE TYPES (SEND FULL SIZE I WILL MAKE THEM FIT).

geofatwoollvin.co.uk