Public access to Stansted Park is on a knife-edge. The voting on the housing planning application that would bring public access to a renewed Stansted Park was SIX FOR refusal and SIX AGAINST refusal. The chairman, Cllr Jackie Cheetham, placed her casting vote for REFUSAL so the application fell yesterday. I expect there will be a fresh application before long as it is clear that there is strong support to achieve the main benefit of public access to a network of footpaths around Stansted Park and to a large area of public open space.

A view of Stansted Park, to which the public would have been given recreational access.

Officers had recommended refusal on three grounds:

• the risk of flooding – but the Environment Agency last week wrote that proposed mitigation measures will be fine; so that reason collapsed.
• that the view of the park from Chapel Hill, Stansted will be obscured; that was a tenuous reason for refusal as the impact is peripheral and the parish council is happy that concerns have been satisfied.
• that the site is in the Metropolitan Green Belt. This fact caused the most debate.

Half the committee members said that an exception to MGB policy was appropriate; that the benefits of the application amounted to special circumstances that justified approval in the green belt. The proposer of the refusal decision, Cllr Christina Cant, said that the MGB is “sacrosanct”. She then went on to say that the (Stansted) parish council should review the MGB boundary, after which she would support approval “in normal circumstances”. Andrew Taylor, the chief planning officer, reminded the committee that UDC has decided against a wholesale review of the MGB, but that an approval can be given as an exception to the MGB policy without reviewing the whole green belt. In answer to a question from Cllr Keith Mackman, Mr Taylor said that an exception was recently made for an application in Hatfield Broad Oak, but the chairman, Cllr Cheetham, said “that was different”; though she didn’t explain why it was different.

I spoke in favour of the application being approved. My speech can be read here. So did Ruth Clifford, the clerk on behalf of Stansted Mountfitchet Parish Council.

Fellow Stansted councillor Joe Rich spoke strongly against the application. He called it a “transient application”. He said the MGB ruled it out. He said that flooding concerns remain, but did not give an explanation he had promised. He made party political and personal insinuations against me (which I will be pursuing) and interrupted the meeting with an outburst of laughter at one member’s questions, but was vigorously slapped down by several committee members from all political parties.

Such behaviour demeans the planning process, gives the impression that it is being politicised, and undermines the case of those who have been opposing this planning application. Objectivity in planning is essential.

So, watch this space! The applicant has the choice of going to an appeal, which will be time-consuming, or doing what the applicant for the planned nearby health centre did last year – resubmit the application. perhaps with some adjustments. I suspect the latter course will be followed in view of the knife-edge the vote.