Last night’s meeting of Uttlesford District Council was a public relations disaster for which no councillor or officer can be proud, but those in charge should bear responsibility. The Local Plan was voted past another hurdle by 23 votes to 14, but with such deep acrimony and disdain for any member of the public or councillor who dissented that one attendee described on Facebook that the meeting “showed a total disregard for the public and their opinion”.
The chairman totally misjudged the mood of the public in a humourless and overbearing manner, threatening to thrown people out for the smallest expression on emotion. Cllr Hicks’s bad chairmanship set the scene for an example of local democracy at its worst. I will write more fully about this later.
In the meantime, here is the statement I made immediately before the council leader, Jim Ketteridge, ungraciously spoke and told the public the council didn’t need to listen to them because “this is not a referendum”.
Statement to Uttlesford District Council Meeting 8th April 2014 Agenda Item 2 Uttlesford Local Plan Pre-Submission Consultation
The Council should reject the Pre-Submission Local Plan as being unsound and should instruct that a new plan is prepared by summer 2014 for the following reasons:
- The Cabinet has neglected to explain with evidence in any documentation presented to Council its assertion that the current Local Plan is sound; submission of a Local Plan document to Council without written justification is deeply flawed;
- The Cabinet has received from the public an overwhelming rejection of the plan at its most recent consultation(s) and has failed to lead public opinion by the covert way in which it has prepared the plan and sought to impose it on most members of this Council and on the wider public of Uttlesford;
- The public in Dunmow, Elsenham, Henham, Newport, Saffron Walden, Stansted, Takeley, Thaxted and other communities across the district feel that the council has provided no justification for ignoring their views;
- The public has no trust in the Local Plan process to deliver growth proposals in the most sustainable locations for access and transport;
- The Pre-Submission Local Plan reinstates the previously rejected new settlement proposal at NE Elsenham; an ill-considered expedient to address the shortfall in the Cabinet’s housing forecasts which it belatedly announced in autumn 2013 without any transparent evaluation of alternative ways of accommodating the increased housing numbers;
- The chosen option at NE Elsenham suffers from poor road access; the previously claimed highway solution for southern traffic to use Hall Road, Elsenham and Takeley has now been dismissed by Essex Highways as inadequate;
- A last minute (March 2014) alternative proposal by Essex Highways of a northern bypass of Stansted Mountfitchet was not presented in papers for consideration to either the Local Plan Working Group (*) or the Cabinet. It will
- Aggravate congestion on the B1383 in Stansted Mountfitchet, and
- Encourage mass urbanisation of the Henham/Elsenham/Stansted Mountfitchet area as foreseen by Graham Eyre QC in the 1981-1983 Airports Inquiries;
- The cost of a full bypass for Stansted Mountfitchet or any other effective road access scheme for NE Elsenham has not been evaluated and costed, so the deliverability of this element of the Pre-Submission Local Plan is in doubt and the plan is unsound.
(*) Correction: It was presented to a 90 minute working group meeting on 31 March and was found to be inadequate. Despite this, no objections were raised about the viability of road access to Hellsenham.
Cllr Alan Dean
This is a disgraceful state of affairs: I’m running out of expletives to describe the cabinet’s anti-democratic actions. The residents of Elsenham and Henham must be wondering what more they need to do. Having fought the battle once, at considerable personal expense, and won they now find they need to fight it all over again!
Watch this space! See my next post, coming soon!
I agree, Stansted came into the process late on in the proceedings due to a lot if waking up to the fact that Elsenham was getting more and more houses , all of which , doubled ,was the amount of traffic going through Stansted. And with the 800 houses and the objections to that , that did so well to be thrown out, we are back to square one . But far far worse. I have been going on for months and months to people in Stansted , that we will be badly affected, by the enormous rise in traffic, the lack of school places and until the surgery is finally delivered , bad health care, and that’s only if we get more doctors! Planning is sticking its fingers in its ears and going lalalalala! Don’t want to know , need houses, stamps feet , we get what we want , we are the big people you the little people.! Grrr!
Over recent weeks it has become more and more obvious that the different actors in the opposition to what the council is doing seem intent on ‘minding their own patch’, rather than working in unison for the greater good – Uttlesford United Residents – remember? This is the only way to go; in the face of the council’s anti–democratic sheer bloody-mindedness we need to avoid duplication of effort – and exasperation! And we badly need to bring planning and legal expertise to bear on the manifold issues, which at times have, in my view, bordered on corrupt practice. Quite how the council cabinet can ‘wave through’ such a duplicitous and inadequate document and claim that all democratic conditions have been met, expecting the Planning Inspector to accept it at face value is sheer effrontery.
We, collectively, must ensure that the Inspector starts to hear the other side of the story. At this early stage he may not take much notice of anything we say, but – by golly! – he will be left in no doubt by the time the Inspection in Public takes place!
Interested parties must inform the Inspector of their concerns
Hear hear! Don’t forget to include Stansted in everything! I do not want to lose my walking routes any more than anyone else does, I do not want all the traffic from Hellsenham causing havoc our end. I do not want the countryside ruined near Henham and Elsenham, I moved to a village , just as all
of your village residents did! Fight ’em!
This week’s events must stand as the strongest argument possible in favour recall of councillors, MPs, etc.