brentwood.gov.uk

I was pleased to be able to attend your presentation at the Ingatestone Community Centre on 22nd February. I have since been able to download the Draft Plan and read some parts of it. Overall it seems very comprehensive, well-reasoned and informative.
As a former local government housing officer for some 30+ years, I very much support the provision of more genuinely affordable housing for the Borough in general and Ingatestone in particular. The sites earmarked within Ingatestone seem to me to be good & appropriate options.
Of course the definition of "affordable" is somewhat contentious & at times Orwellian - i.e affordability = unaffordabilty. The Government seems to regard affordable as being something like 80% of market rents for the rented sector, although their whole housing policy now seems to lean overheavily towards owner-occupation with little regard for those that are unable or do not wish to buy. My view is that there is a definite need for more sub-market rented homes, provided by Housing Associations or dare I say it the local authority itself.
Obviously in an ideal world, every bit of open countryside would be protected (I say this as a keen rambler in the countryside & elsewhere), and places like Ingatestone Garden Centre (IGC) wouldn't be closing. But as IGC has closed down that seems to be an ideal site for genuinely affordable rented housing and/or low-cost owner-occupied dwellings - ideally affordable in perpetuity and perhaps with a reasonable priority for local people. I think somewhere like Ingatestone needs an increase in that type of provision. What it doesn't need is more footballers' mansions, or developments like that at Trueloves Lane (where, hilariously, the new homes were marketed as affordable with a price tag of some £1.5 million!). Without more affordable housing, where do people expect the next generation to live? Kids living with parents until they're about 50? Or moving to Scunthorpe (for example) just to find somewhere to live.
Reading a recent article in "Inside Housing" it was reported that just over 10% of England was currently used for housing. Nationally, to build some 2.5 million homes over the coming years would only take things up to around 12%. So I think we are some way short yet of concreting over the entire countryside, as some fear.
As you state in your report, any new development needs to be appropriate in scale and design for its location, have suitable infrastructure, protect Green Belt as much as possible, have suitable landscape buffers / definable boundaries etc (e.g. between Ingatestone & Mountnessing) and, where affordable housing is included with a scheme, to be well integrated (i.e. avoiding what has been referred to in the media as "poor doors"!).
On the question of affordable housing (Policy 7.5), I am aware that developers will at times seek to avoid any affordable quotas, instead making a payment for the Council / HA to develop elsewhere. I think this leads to less mixed communities and should be resisted as far as possible.
From some of the conversations I overheard at the meeting of 22nd February, I suspect a fair few local residents won't share most of my views, and will probably be in the "nimby" camp, of not building anything anywhere ever. I wonder how many of those objecting are living in developments which were themselves once open land and no doubt subject to similar objections a generation or two ago?
One thing I'd query - in Sections 7.20 /7.21 you refer to 17.1% of local households having someone with a disability / long-term illness, yet only 5% provision for such groups is proposed for new developments.
I remember at one time there was discussion of "lifetime homes" - developing new homes that could be easily adaptable for people in all stages of their life. But these are probably not popular with developers.
To finish on a parochial note, I'm wondering what the plans are for 24 Norton Road, Ingatestone - the former Children & Families Consultation Service offices - which have been empty and boarded up for some months now. I assume this site will be earmarked for housing?
Many thanks.
John Bright CIHCM