Message from Nick Baker - Chairman of Joint Parishes
Tuesday 5th August 2008

Hi Everybody

A few matters to update you on. The Joint Parishes Steering Group met last week and formed a small sub group to look further at the dispersed idea for the 4200 houses required under the Regional Spatial Strategy. We felt that we should work up an alternative strategy, which would allow for sharing the homes throughout the District, and allowing affordable housing to be spread everywhere.

Meanwhile the Department for Communities and Local Government have published the notes and recommendations from Session 2 of the Eco-town Challenge. They can be found by clicking on this link. Go to the bottom of the page to download their report, (Notes and recommendations from session 2 of the eco-town challenge). Contained within that at Annex B, entitled 'Promoters Submission to the Panel is an item outlining "A day in the life of the Smith family living in the Eco-town in 2016." This is Item 9 on page 52.

I urge you to read both and I would love to have your thoughts on the proposals. There is nothing we can challenge at present because there is nothing of substance in the submission, although it is clear that the panel were impressed

We seem to trying to oppose a vision at present, and until we get some meat on the bones it is very difficult to oppose visions. They seem nonsense to some and serious to others.

Nick Baker

Click here to view the article on the Department of Communities and Local Government Website

Where does this leave Uttlesford District Council and their decision about the Local Government Framework and Option 4 in particular? 

Nick Baker says

"The J.P.C.S.G. are convinced that the U.D.C. consultation should be brought to a conclusion as soon as possible.  We know that U.D.C. will publish the results of the consultation for discussion at the Environment Committee on the 16th September 2008.  We are also aware that the consultation shows overwhelming opposition to Option 4, as well as considerable opposition to Options 2 and 3. The J.P.C.S.G. strongly believe that the adoption of Option 4 as the 'preferred option' by U.D.C, led to the 'Developer led' proposal for an Eco-town on the same site. Without Option 4 being the 'preferred option’ in the consultation I doubt the proposed Eco-town would have been considered. We do understand that the consultation should run it's course to stand up to scrutiny, but given that we were forced to hold it over Christmas and the New Year because of the extreme urgency, it seems ironic that we are now in August without further advancement.

 U.D.C. continue to deny the link between Option 4 and the Eco-town I cannot understand this thinking and we now head for a decision on the Eco-town and Option 4 in the same time frame, early 2009.

 The J.P.C.S.G. would like to take the perceived preference for Option 4 off the table for good, by fairly appraising the consultation results.  We still don't know whether the Eco-town proposal for 5000 houses is in addition to the 4200 extra homes under the Regional Spatial Strategy, indeed their is little encouragement from Government that this is the case.

This land would make a lot of loaves of bread; just see for yourself.

 1 Square mile of proposed arable land equals 640 acres

 At say 4 tonnes per acre, that equals 2560 tonnes of grain

 Take a small to medium loaf of 800 grams. A loaf consists of quite a lot of water and other ingredients, but let’s assume for this calculation that 70% of a loaf is wheat, therefore 560 grams of every loaf is wheat.

 2560 tonnes X 1000 = 2,560,000 kilograms x 1000 = 2,560,000,000 grams

Divided this by 560 grams per loaf = 4,571,428 loaves lost to concrete.

Yes 4 ½ million loaves lost per year forever.

With the approval of the J.P.S.G. Chris and I made additional copies of your letters.  Whilst we recognise that we have not received copies from every one, on the morning of the last day of the consultation we had well over a thousand plus a hundred or more from outside our villages.  Every one condemned the plan to build the eco-town.  Additionally, we felt that because this plan had been devised on the back of the notorious 'Preferred Option Four' we decided that the D.C.L.G. should have copies of the letters you sent in to the Uttlesford Consultation earlier this year as well.  These we had bound into 32 spiral backed volumes.  In total between the two consultations well over two thousand letters.

Of the meeting, Don said,

Firstly, may we thank all who wrote letters, came to London, donated money (we have had a great response from the latest membership scheme) prepared posters and banners and a special thanks to Gary Willis at Millways for providing the binders, paper and printing facilities for the letter copying, Ken Forbes for spiral binding our option4 letters and Jonathon Leech and Margaret Shaw for contributing pictures.

Click here to view a damning report

See and hear the speeches through Herts and Essex Video - Click Here

Minutes now available - click here

A good representation from Henham and Elsenham attended a meeting of the Environment Committee at the U.D.C Council Chambers, Saffron Walden where two items on the  agenda were of considerable interest to our villages. Prior to the meeting, two speakers, Tasmin Lees, a schoolgirl from Elsenham and Jason Barlow, a journalist from Henham addressed the committee members.

Tasmin speech, (click here to view) concentrated on two main points. Firstly, the Overview of Representations Received, (introduced in item 7 of the agenda see below) failed to produce 'real figures' and seemed to imply that only residents of Henham and Elsenham had objected to option 4.  Secondly, she was critical of U.D.C. in that whilst they had stated their opposition to Eco-towns they had left it until two weeks before the consultation closed before circulating a leaflet asking people to respond but giving no guidance as to "why the proposal is nonsense." She finished by pleading to U.D.C. to support their objection to an eco-town by removing option 4.

Jason was far more direct and critical about the U.D.C. and likened the situation they had created as worthy of a 'Tom Sharpe' novel.  He concluded by saying,
'Surely a District Council which is genuinely committed to stopping an eco-town being built on its own territory would declare Option 4 as unworkable and withdraw it.' (click here to read a draft of his speech).

The meeting then commenced and it was some time before Item 6 was reached, viz.

To decide U.D.C's 'Response to D.C.L.G's Eco-town Consultation'.  To this end, Roger Harborough,  Head of Planning, had produced a Briefing Paper  to which he spoke at length.

A prolonged discussion ensued about what should be included in the response.  Pleas to remove option 4, (including an excellent representation from Councillor David Morson), were rejected on the grounds that the full process of evaluating the LDF had not been completed.  The main fear was that the Council felt that they might be liable to legal challenge should they do so at this stage. However, apart from this, for the first time there were signs that the represented political parties were beginning to work together. The original wording of the response had been centred about U.D.C.'s opposition to eco-towns per se rather than concentrating on the Elsenham proposal, it being a Planning Department opinion that this was an early stage in the proceedings and that a more 'site specific' responses could be introduced later. Councillor Catherine Dean proposed a number of amendments however, which included stressing that considerable local opposition had already been received to building on the site, that it was a green-field site and not a brown-field one and that there were serious doubts about the public and private transport infrastructure.  There was a unanimous vote on the item, the full wording of which we may see in due course.
 

Item  7 was on the 'Core Strategy Preferred Options Consultation', and was to provided councillors with an overview of representations received.
(Please see a 35 page Overview of Representations Received).  Roger Harborough defended its content and lack of detail.  He stated that a fuller report would be available for the Autumn meeting.

Thanks to all those who attended.  A senior Councillor said that a good public turnout had made a lot of difference to the quality of the debate and its outcome. We left the meeting at 10.10pm. - BB

The following is taken from the Daily Telegraph book, ' People Power' where a passage from The New Statesman 2004 is quoted:

E-Petition

Please visit the on-line petition to 10 Downing Street, viz:-

'We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to Abandon plans to build an Eco Town in Elsenham & Henham.'

which you can find by going to:-

 Abandon plans to build an Eco Town in Elsenham & Henham

Please forward this to all your friends and family so they can sign up as well