Now the elections are over, we can get back into our normal routines again.
One of the issues looming on the horizon is the new housing coming. Especially the housing on the Rayleigh/Rawreth border between Rawreth Lane and London Road and on the Hullbridge/Rawreth border near Watery Lane.
It will surely make the traffic situation worse. But we want to achieve some postives. Apart from providing places for people to live, we want to see new amenities and facilities. To give an example – when the housing was being built over 20 years ago along Downhall Park Way, a resident in Downhall Road said they would be the ‘slums of the future’. It certainly hasn’t turned out like that….!
One aspect of this is to get solid agreements with developers on what exactly will happen. Judging by the latest news from Hawkwell Councillors John and Christine Mason, it’s not going very well with their developments:
You would expect that major developers would put forward a proposal for planning permission a scheme that was pretty much ?on the ball? in terms of significant needs such as road closures, construction access, building compounds, change of haul route and new marketing suites etc.,
—–
But according to RDC Officers the people that put planning applications together are then superseded by the operational people who open the site who then see that major changes need to be made hence the problems we are now trying to deal with. The apparent lack of contact between these two groups of professionals seems astonishing.
——
As we have said before Members of the Council are excluded from many of these decisions which are taken by Officers of Rochford District Council AFTER planning permission is granted.
We are talking to John and Christine to see if we can get any tips on how to avoid this happening in other areas.