We are advised that 23 trenches will be dug across the site North of London Road, Rayleigh; this is being done by Essex County Council for archaeological investigative purposes. (No doubt because of the proposed developemnt there)
The work is expected to commence 2nd September and will be carried out by two 20 ton tracked excavators; each individual trench will by dug, explored and reinstated within five days.
The work will be carried out by ?Wessex Archaeology? using ?Danbury Plant Hire? for the digging.
The timing of this operation has to fit in with the farmer?s crop cycle.
So 7 years and £2.1million in the planning and only now we need to check out the site archeology content for the Core Plan …..!!!
Jim Cripps re #1
Would you prefer that all of the offered sites were dug up before RDC Core Strategy made the selection of areas and before preferred sites were allocated in it? Have you costed that?
I consider the cost of the Core Strategy exceedingly good value because, as apparently I need to repeat for the umpteenth time here to get the message across, if the Adopted Core Strategy being put in place been delayed or not achieved, then instead of the modest numbers of homes proposed in the Adopted Core Strategy it would have been open season for developers on ANY green belt land and other sites and quite possibly resulted in tens of thousands of additional new homes within RDC and in places of neither the authority’s nor most residents choosing. Developers would doubtless be delighted to pay far more than the Core Strategy cost RDC to have it torn up and expose us to that risk.
I would also point out that the lengthy period it took to produce and adopt the RDC Core Strategy was not caused by any delays of RDC and its Conservative Members making, although a number of opposition Members did their best to delay it.
Such archaeological investigations are frequently requested when sites are about to be developed, but hardly ever before any development is proposed.
Hats off to Colin for posting on this site, he gets quite a bit of flak but at least he provides an alternative, and dare I say, balanced view.
Er, excuse me -you are (now) spending the monies before the allocations are approved. The Inspector’s Hearing does’nt start till 3rd Sept and his findings will not be known untill……..when?.
And yes Oz, I do admire the man for sticking his head up but did you mean to say RDC ‘biased view’.
Jim Cripps, just an FYI, the only reason this dig is happening now is thanks to one of the RAG members – who happens to be a qualified archaeologist – spotting what apears to be potential crop marks on the proposed site.
You wonder at what point (if any) RDC would have conducted such an investigation. I guess preserving the history of our country doesnt feature to highly on the infamous core-development-plan that they are so fond of.
well said adam priest, im hoping that they do find something of value because then rdc will surely have to start again with a different area and that means if I understand it correctly they will have to start from scratch and have the new area approved by members of the board which means we have more time to oppose this from even happening. we done so well in 3 weeks over the current plans imagine what we could actually do if we had more time!!!!!