brentwood.gov.uk

Having studied the draft local housing plan for Brentwood in some depth, I notice there is a plan to build on the land adjacent to the A12 (on its northern side) which is situated between the A12 and Viking Way. On a personal note, and I beg your indulgence as it is at odds with what I believe is best for our town, my wife and I have often said, during our thirty three years of residency here, that if this land was to be developed in the way proposed it would reduce, or even eradicate, the noise nuisance from the A12 that has increased over the years, mainly owing to regular resurfacing of the road resulting in it being higher now. As we find this so objectionable, I spent a great deal of time obtaining signatures on a petition for Vicki Davies who was able, on the strength of this, to arrange for noise testing to be done. The levels exceed those that are considered to be acceptable and it was proposed that a low noise surface be reinstated as this had reduced noise in the past. That was several years ago and nothing has been done!

It is common knowledge that for some years our housing stock has been diminishing, resulting in an increasing number of people being homeless, and I am a great believer in that something needs to be done to address this problem. I firmly believed that the best way forward was to develop brown fill areas such as the one local to me on the Highwood hospital site which, I believe, was very well done by the developers - a site to be proud of! Unfortunately, its completion has caused some problems.

After the houses on the site were fully occupied, I have it on good authority that when one of the GPs at the Brambles Surgery (the surgery situated on this site) retired, the local health authority refused to replace him. The NHS managers had expected his 1500 or so patients to be absorbed into existing local surgeries. One of these offered to run the practice as a branch surgery providing another GP could be employed my them, funded by the local health authority. The NHS managers, again, refused and this plan was only accepted when all the local surgeries closed their lists to new patients. Further to this, I learnt on the 2nd of February that there was a twenty six day wait for the first GP appointment at the surgery that I attend although, in fairness, patients are seen if the doctors feel the case is an emergency.

Since the Highwood hospital development, traffic between it and the centre of town has increased significantly. Testimony to this was one of our councillors complaining that he was finding it increasingly difficult to turn right out of Geary Drive onto the Ongar Road. This, of course, was remedied for him by the construction of the mini roundabout at this junction.

Although the draft plans discuss, very fully, the subject of infrastructure, considering the poor record of upgrading these to meet increasing needs, highlighted by the shortcomings above, I am not convinced that the residents of Brentwood would not suffer adversely if the proposals for the developments planned in the town and its environs are adopted.

Because of this, for some time now, I have come to recognise that the best solution for overcoming the housing shortage would be to build new towns well away from existing built up areas. There would almost certainly be some objections to this type of development by people living close to them but, owing to the relative remoteness of appropriate sites, the numbers objecting to and effected by them pale into insignificance compared to those living in already developed urban and suburban areas.

Other advantages of new towns/garden villages include, among other things, self sufficiency which means that all necessary facilities such as GP surgeries are included and, as such, are far more likely to meet the needs of residents compared to the erosion of services, as explained above, when attempting to boost existing facilities to meet additional needs. Although I am not in a position of knowledge to comment with any authority on schools, I suspect the same could be true of the provision of education for our young people.

Another obvious benefit of this type of development is, despite accommodating large numbers, the impact of traffic in local towns would be far less compared to that created by the provision of in town housing schemes - this also addresses one of my main concerns; one which I am sure is shared by many of Brentwood's residents.

With the above points in mind, I applaud the plan for Dunton Hills Garden Village and congratulate the planners for its conception. My greatest hope is that another area, or areas, could be developed in this way as an alternative to the additional housing being considered for development in Brentwood town and areas in close proximity to it.