On June 27th we have a meeting of the District Council Development Committee . And then it will be followed by an extraordinary meeting of Full Council.

There are 2 items on the agenda.

The first is the Rochford Area Action Plan (which we will write about later)

The second is about a government consultation on having a new crossing over the Thames. We are printing the full report below. It includes a prepared response for councillors to agree to. (Which almost implies that councillors can’t work these things out for themselves!). However we’d be very interested to hear your views on this. Do you support a new lower Thames Crossing – and what’s the reason for your answer? How do you think us councillors should respond to the consultation?

OPTIONS FOR A NEW LOWER THAMES CROSSING –
CONSULTATION DOCUMENT
1 SUMMARY
1.1 This report outlines three Options presented by the Department for Transport
for a new Lower Thames Crossing.
1.2 All options are expected to be feasible to deliver, in terms of construction,
value for money and financing. However, a crossing at option C delivers the
highest economic growth benefits of the three locations and on that basis
merits support.
1.3 A suggested response to the consultation questions is attached to this report
as appendix 1.
========
2 NEED FOR CHANGE
2.1 There is lack of capacity at the existing crossing, due partly to the lack of
alternative routes on the strategic road network. The crossing experiences
the third highest level of delay across the strategic road network, with delays
in excess of nine minutes experienced by almost half of users travelling in
both directions.
2.2 A study in 2009 concluded that some short and medium term improvements
could be made to impact on the performance of the existing crossing,
including suspension of charges at certain times and free-flow charging.
However, these improvements would only create marginal headroom and it
was concluded that a more strategic decision would be needed to resolve the
capacity problem.
==========
3 THE OPTIONS
3.1 Three options are put forward in the consultation – see appendix 2:
Option A: At the site of the existing A282 Dartford Thurrock crossing;
Option B: Connecting the A2 with the A1089; and
Option C: Connecting the M2 with the A13 and the M25 between junctions 29
and 30 (a variant would also link the M2 to the M20).
3.2 These three options have been assessed against the principles set out in the
HM Treasury’s Green Book. The intention is to show whether the schemes:-
 are supported by a robust case for change;
 demonstrate value for money;
 are commercially viable;
 are financially affordable; and
 are achievable.
3.3 The findings of the review of the schemes indicate that the benefits, including
wider economic impacts, of all the options are likely to outweigh the costs.
This means, subject to further work, each option is economically justified.
3.4 For all the options public funding will be needed to initiate scheme
development. It is, though, highlighted that options C and the C variant are
likely to require public funding support, since they may not generate enough
toll revenue to be self funding.
3.5 In terms of the impacts of each option it is concluded as follows:-
Option A – will perform better than the other options in alleviating congestion,
but will not improve connectivity of the strategic road network. As a result will
stimulate only limited economic growth compared to the other options.
Option B – not as effective as option A in alleviating congestion, but could add
delay to the A2 and A13 east of Basildon. Will support some new economic
activity in the local area. Greater environmental harm than A.
Option C – will alleviate congestion to the same extent as option B. Greater
journey time savings than B and more economic benefits as a result of the
agglomeration of business activity. Greatest impacts on environmentally
sensitive areas.
Option C variant – forecast to bring the largest economic benefits.
========
4 DISCUSSION
4.1 The suggested response to the consultation is set out in appendix 1 to this
report. Whilst it is accepted that option C, including the variant, will have the
greatest environmental impact and may require public funding, this route
option provides a more direct route for many journeys and will generate more
economic benefits.
========
5 RISK IMPLICATIONS
5.1 In the current economic climate all major infrastructure projects carry an
element of financial risk. However, there is a sound economic case for the
construction of a new Lower Thames crossing in terms of reducing
congestion, improving connectivity and delivering economic growth.
========
6 ENVIRONMENTAL IMPLICATIONS
6.1 All route options will have some environmental impact; options B and C will
have a greater impact than option A. A careful assessment of mitigation
measures will be essential.
======
7 RECOMMENDATION
7.1 It is proposed that Council RESOLVES
That a response to the consultation on Options for a New Lower Thames
Crossing be made, as set out in appendix 1 with support for option C,
including the option C variant.

4.4
Appendix 1
Q1. Do you agree that there is a strong case to increase road-based river crossing
capacity in the Lower Thames area?
A: AGREE
Q2. Which of the following location Options for a new crossing do you prefer?
A: OPTION C VARIANT
Q3. Please indicate how important the following factors were in influencing your
preference for the location of a new crossing, in answer to Q2. Please mark
whether they were very important, important or not important.
 Forecast contributions to the national economy.
A: Important.
 Forecast reductions in congestion at the existing Dartford-Thurrock crossing
and forecast improvements to the resilience of the surrounding road network.
A: Important.
 Forecast reductions in greenhouse gas emissions.
A: Important.
 Smaller forecast adverse impacts on environmentally sensitive areas and
larger forecast improvements in quality of life relative to other location
Options.
A: Important.
 Smaller forecast adverse impacts on planned development relative to other
location Options.
A: Not important.
 The distribution of forecast impacts on people within a range of different
income groups.
A: Important.
 Lower estimated costs relative to other location Options.
A: Not important.
 Forecast value for money.
A: Important

Reading through the stats, Rochford had 384 fly-tipping incidents (356 on the highways, 23 on council land , 1 agricultural and 4 on private land. The council spent £12,672 on clearing things up.

You can see for yourself whether Rochford actually took any legal action against anyone…

Incidentally, the actor playing the father is Lee Majors, from the Six Million Dollar Man.

Have you seen this new artwork on the hoardings near Rayleigh Station? If you can’t read it the writing says “Welcome To Rayleigh”. We understand it’s there with the approval of the landowner. We’d be interested to know your views on this! As a reminder, here’s a picture of how the site has previously looked:

The BBC website reports here:

Inspectors say they have “significant concerns” about how domestic violence victims are supported by Essex Police. HM Inspector of Constabulary (HMIC) has released its report following a number of domestic violence-related killings.
Maria Stubbings, Jeanette Goodwin and Christine Chambers were all murdered by their ex-partners, while Christine’s daughter Shania was also killed. HMIC said more work was needed to manage properly the risk to victims. Essex Police said it had improved. The Independent Police Complaints Commission found failings in all three murder cases.

Essex Police respond here:

“We receive 80 calls on domestic abuse a day and we are very conscious that we must get our response right every single time.
“We are committed to helping victims of domestic abuse and we would urge anyone suffering at the hands of a violent offender to contact us immediately. Our pledge is this: ‘We will listen to you and we will help you’.”

You can read the inspectors report here. Here’s an extract (click to enlarge)

The first nitpick is that you have to hunt around to find his full name. He mentions his first name, Nick, quite a lot, but you have to search around to find his surname, Alston.

The second, more major nitpick is that you can’t leave comments on Nick’s blog. There are some other blogs like that, but it does make them weaker. It also makes them less trustworthy. For example, if we wrote something incorrect or totally unfair on onlineFOCUS, someone could leave a comment to set things straight. And knowing that we get comments make us concentrate a bit harder on getting things right.

The third nitpick is that there aren’t many links. For example the website mentions the report from Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary on how Essex Police manage domestic abuse cases. Nick writes:

HMIC finds that Essex Police has made improvements in its handling of these incidents, especially in providing background intelligence and information to officers, responding to calls quickly and investing significantly in training.
—-
The report also identifies several areas where further progress needs to be made. In particular, HMIC finds that Essex Police should make further refinements to the risk assessment process, increase the focus on perpetrators including targeted activity around repeat offenders, continue to develop means to enhance the confidence of victims to report crimes, and intensify its work with partner agencies across the county to safeguard victims. These are all constructive and insightful recommendations, and I am grateful to HMIC for their work.

But there’s no link to the actual report, to allow you to read it for yourself….

Anyway, we found a link – here.

Chris Black was quoted:

Lib Dem councillor for Downhall and Rawreth Chris Black said Rawreth Parish Council initially suggested a site centrally in the village, which had more accessible roads, but Rochford District Council objected to the idea.
He added: “I’m concerned about the impact on drainage, education and the future of Rayleigh Sports and Social Club, but fear it’s too late.”
At the proposal stage in 2010, almost 200 residents objected to the development, with more than 1,700 objections raised across various sites in the district.
Mr Black added: “The council has been far too willing to develop on this site and the Government inspector has gone along with it.
“I feel we’ve been stitched up.”

However it mainly features Mrs Linda Kendall, who came a very good second for UKIP in a district council election in Whitehouse Ward. Much of what she’s now saying is spot on – stuff we’ve been saying, and Rawreth Parish Council has been saying, for years. We welcome her comments.

However she is wrong in one respect when she says “the whole of that green belt area is going to disappear.” . Under the current plans, most of the green land North of London Road will remain green- thankfully we stopped the original idea of 1800 houses there.

The SeeChange Plan provides professional coaching to any job seeker aged 18-24. Their goal is to support each young adult on their transition to the next stage of their life; this might be paid work, work experience, voluntary work, training or study. They also provide £3 travel money, which is contributed to each day the person attends the SeeChange Plan (upon ticket or receipt for travel)

Currently, 80% of their group members are landing jobs.

If you know someone who might be interested please email info@seejobgroup.com or telephone 07957 498340.

Public Health England is a new government organisation – dealing with public health.

In this video John Newton, Chief Knowledge Officer at Public Health England, introduces Longer Lives — a new web-based tool which allows local people to see how their areas perform on early deaths from major killers, like heart disease and cancer, and how it varies across the country.

We’ll be looking at the Longer Lives website again in the future – here’s just a taster of the info there, which shows that Essex isn’t do that well in preventing premature deaths from cancer:

But we are doing better with heart disease: