brentwood.gov.uk

(Honeypot Lane): I write with regard to the proposed Honey Pot Lane development. As a resident of (name of road) this proposed development will have a hugely negative impact on me and my family. We moved to our house over nine years ago as a newly married couple. We worked very hard to be able to afford our house and chose it very carefully. We had a very new baby at the time we moved and chose this exact location with a view to raising our family here. We considered many things when deciding to move to here firstly it is just far enough away from the high street to mean that traffic flow would be a lot less and parking restrictions would not apply. This would not be the case if the development went ahead. Already our side roads are getting busier and busier, with employees from the offices at the bottom of Spital lane parking down Spital Lane/ Brook Road and Selwood Road. The traffic flow is already heavy at times and this would become a big problem if a large number of new houses were built here. We have three children now and we hoped they would be able to play outside safely in our cup-de-sac road. As we understand it, the houses at the end of Selwood Road are to be knocked down to become an access road for the development. This will change the whole structure of Selwood Road, not only during the building stage, which has been suggested as 5 years (basically our children's childhood years) but also following completion. This is quite simply unfair. There are many young families that live here and their children should all have the right to play outside safely, riding bikes, scooters etc without traffic flooding our roads and making this impossible. I know many of us would not have chosen to live in a very busy road and that is exactly what this will become if we are not listened to. We live very close to South Weald, we specially chose to do so as we wanted to enjoy rural Brentwood. Too much of our greenery is being taken away, with a HUGE impact to the environment. This is Greenbelt land and we feel very strongly that it should be protected. Whilst I understand the need for new housing I have great concerns about this location. We already have existing flooding and drainage problems, the impact of this development will only make them worse. In addition our local schools are already struggling as they are severely over subscribed. Only this September St Peters School became a three form intake as there was an excess bulge of children who were allocated to schools out of the area because there were no places available to them within Brentwood. The same issue applies to our struggling doctors surgeries. Over the years there has been a very obvious decline in the service provided by our local surgeries. Getting an appointment is challenging to say the least, with surgeries struggling with the number of patients they have already, building new houses here is only going to make this dangerous situation worse as they simply do not have the capacity to support this number of additional residents. Adding this number of houses in this location is going to put huge strain on the roads of Brentwood too. There are already problems not only with potholes, the sheer weight of traffic, but also with parking in town. As I understand it there are also proposals to build on Chattam Way car park and William Hunter. I find this incredulous. I work in Crown Street and not a day passes when clients don't advise us that they have had problems parking and this will only be made worse with the addition of 200 plus houses locally. This is simply not a good choice for such a development. I find the proposals deeply flawed. The site was previously rejected as it did not meet the councils spatial strategy as far as I can see nothing has changed. I do hope you will take these concerns into consideration. This proposed plan is making long term residents of Brentwood have to consider their future here. I hope you will be able to protect them. Not all residents that would like to have been able to get in touch with their views have been able to do so, so I write on their behalf also. I have not been able to find one person who is in agreement with this proposal. I hope our opinions matter as we are the residents, the people who will be directly affected, this is our community, we are the heart of Brentwood and we say no!