brentwood.gov.uk

Having been to the local meeting, read through the plan document, I am writing to place on record my objections to the plans related to Ingatestone etc.
Ingatestone is supposed to be a village made up of a community that cares about its environment, plus many residents are commuters to London and are very pleased to return to a place of tranquility and country air after hours spent in London etc. Your outline plans are taking this away from us and will just turn Ingatestone into a 'feeder' town like Brentwood, which has already been ruined by past planning decisions. You plan to build 170 homes in Mountnessing on 2 sites, 60 houses on the site of the Ingateston Garden Centre (ref 128), 42 houses beside the A12 (ref 079A) at the entry to Ingatestone from Mountnessing, as well as an Industrial Estate (ref 079C) in the same area of this entry to the village, which will have a detrimental effect on the impression of the village atmosphere and reduce the appeal of Ingatestone, as somewhere to live that is different from surrounding towns. This is all extra to the infill plans that are about in Ingatesone for more houses and flats - 2 office buildings have applied to be changed into apartments, giving an extra 9 properties, plus an increase in apartment above shops another 4 at least, The Crown to become 4 apartments or more, 16 houses (ref 042) beside the doctor's surgery and 10 houses (ref 098) planned for Ingleton House, where will the old people be placed if this happens and they lose their homes? All these properties will have a minimum of 1 car each and many of the houses will have 2, including the houses planned for Mountnessing - could be an extra 300 cars, at least, at a stroke within the area- where will they all park when they use facilities in Ingatestone - we have no room now
The public bus services is not reliable or convenient for enough people not to need their cars to get to trains or shops, when needed to either Shenfield or into Ingatestone, especially, as people do not like walking too far when we have weather problems and certainly not back from shops carrying heavy bags etc.
 Industrial Estate:
The idea of this type of development is ridiculous as the one that had permission on the site of the old scrapyard in Mountnessing, beside the roundabout on the A12, never happened despite changes made to the plans, as presumably there was no demand to develop. To move it down to the edge of Ingatesone is madness, as all heavy vehicles and vans and other traffic to and from such an estate would need to travel through Mountnessing, past schools and houses with the risk that many of the vehicle movements will also travel through Ingatestone, which could not cope with these types of vehicles and volumes of extra traffic. Plus at most of the residents in this area work away from the village you will just be bringing more traffic into an area already not suitable for these extra volumes, as well as increasing traffic from all the extra houses planned to no real benefit of local people. As I pointed out in the previous paragraph, a number of offices have applied for a change of use to apartments, thus reducing the appeal of Ingatestone for a commercial use!
 Infrastructure
Why you think we need more houses in this area defeats me as the infrastructure is not there to cope with more people. Starting with sewers and other utilities currently overstretched, the doctor's surgery is already struggling to keep up and would find it hard to cope with many more patients, schools will be overloaded with extra children, shops would lose trade as parking becomes impossible. Trade has already started to go from the shops with the closure of Barclays Bank, which used to be a draw for customers of these shops. The other major problem is the current roads are not built to take account of all this extra traffic plus there is no extra space for parking in Ingatestone. The footpaths in Ingatestone are already much too narrow in places for pedestrians to pass each other, especially older residents using disability vehicles/walking frames etc causing others to step into the road, which could be the cause of accidents with more vehicles movements, especially commercial vans and lorries.
 Dunton New Town
This is the place for you to build more of your homes' target etc. as the A127 will probably have an upgraded link to the M25, when the new Dartford Crossing is built, with the feeder road planned to be via this new link. Another 500 houses built there would take pressure of other areas in the borough like Ingatestone and all the new facilities would presumably be in place to help this new development. This way you would keep many of the problems outlined above in one area, which would be much more cost effective and manageable.
 Green Belt
You mentioned in your planning document that the Green Belt is in place for many reasons but 1 in particular is to prevent "Ribbon development" yet your plan for Brentwood through to Ingatestone goes against the advice. Once the Officers Meadows site in Shenfield is built with some 600 houses planned, there will be houses linked from Brentwood Town Centre through to Ingatestone, again making this area look very much like a suburb of London!! Plus what chance that more of these Shenfield residents decide to drive to Ingatestone - more cars in the village more pressure on parking etc. We lose our village community more and more!
I hope my comments are useful for when you come to consider The Local Plan further and you then give more consideration to the problems in Ingatestone, as well as considering the opportunities to develop more in an area with less issues.