brentwood.gov.uk

I am writing with regard to the proposed development in the village of West Horndon.

Whilst I have no objections to a small amount of growth in the village, I despair at the thought of the plans you have for our "historical village".

My main concerns regard the transport infrastructure that we currently have. Our roads are appalling. They are falling apart as they are so over-used at the moment, even with the amount of houses we have here now - to build another 1500 homes would increase the traffic flow three-fold and make for even more noise and pollution to our homes.

My son waits at the side of the road for his school bus (there is no "proper" bus stop for children attending St Martin's) and reports to me how frightening it is with trucks and cars speeding by. He constantly moans at the amount of fumes he (as an asthmatic) is inhaling. To get across the one zebra crossing that we have at 7.50 in the morning is a nightmare as no cars or lorries stop - what would it be like with more traffic flow? It is only a matter of time before a child is struck either at the crossing or by the side of the narrow path along Station Road.

I myself use the station to get into London daily. Have you even visited our station? Have you seen how inadequate it is for the amount of people that use it now? Increase this and the station will not cope. We are lucky to have someone manning it at peak times (if not you join the huge queue for tickets at the machine and then you will most probably miss your train and then have to wait half an hour for the next one). We have no disabled facilities. Basically you cannot travel London-bound if you cannot use the stairs! Will this be improved? I doubt it. Certainly C2C have no plans on this. Plus, I thought the whole idea of developing the village was to bring more employment to the borough - surely by shipping people out to Southend and London this will have the opposite effect! People won't be spending their money in Brentwood.

Flooding is another major issue in the village, with Christmas day 2012 being an example. By building on our soak away green belt fields this will only cause more issues. Can Brentwood County Council guarantee to find me cheap house insurance if this is the case? No, I didn't think so. Not your problem. Well, at the moment it's not mine either (I guess I'm one of the lucky ones) but I feel this is something that needs to be addressed if you are to go ahead with your plans.

I agree that some development on, perhaps, the industrial site should go ahead, but what about the people that work there? Where will they be relocated? Has this even been considered?

You mention that "after the event" you will work on putting the infrastructure in place but we all know that 1500 homes will not get us better amenities, improve our surgery, our station, our roads, our policing, our school, give our children somewhere to go and things to do. For those sorts of improvements to be made you have to be talking about 4 times the amount and so then what happens to our historical village? It is no more. The only thing we would be guaranteed is a couple more shops and probably a take-away or two - well we don't want that - never have - never will!
1500 homes will just make our little village that works well become overcrowded. We will never get to see a doctor. We will never get a seat on the train. There will be more road accidents. There will be more pollution. We will lose our wildlife. We will have kids hanging around on street corners with nothing to do. Our school will be an impossibility to get into. The list is endless.

So before you go jumping in at the deep end and agreeing to all this development, I really feel you need to look closer. Yes, by all means give us some new houses, but I am sure that for the amount of homes that the borough needs to "create" there are numerous places around that could all take a "bit" rather than having such a damaging impact on just one tiny area.