Comment

Preferred Site Allocations 2018

Representation ID: 18704

Received: 05/03/2018

Respondent: Mr Darren Williams

Representation Summary:

Section 12 - Dunton Hills Garden Village (DHGV) "evidence base is increasing including masterplan work" and Section 64 e - "Developing a comprehensive masterplan for the new garden village at Dunton Hills, to engrain the core garden village design principles"; how can an objective view be made on site selection before this masterplan detail is presented and made available to the public?

Full text:

Section 12 - Dunton Hills Garden Village (DHGV) "evidence base is increasing including masterplan work" and
Section 64 e - "Developing a comprehensive masterplan for the new garden village at Dunton Hills, to engrain the core garden village design principles"
* how can an objective view be made on site selection before this masterplan detail is presented and made available to the public?

Section 26 - "Commited to growth . . . but in a way that maintains and enhances unique local character"
* wheras DHGV will completely destroy the unique local character of Dunton Village which is right on its border.

Section 28 - Strategic Objectives - S04 "A new well connected community at Dunton Hills"
* Please see fuller comments below - but how can it be well connected when it isolated from the rest of Brentwood, isolated from the railway and bound by already heavily congested roads

Figure 9 - page 26/27 - Proposed Housing Led Allocations
* DHGV is not included in the Green Belt total, effectively masking the extent of Green Belt land being developed
* Out of 381.25 Hectares of land allocated, 342.65 (257 + 85.65) is green belt. That's a staggering 89.8% Green belt land, which does not deliver a sustainable, ecological allocation plan.

Section 67 - Total dwellings
* Figure 9 shows a total allocated dwelling number of 6,154 houses. DHGV makes up 40% of this total. However, section 67 states this figure could increase to 9080 with accelerated growth within DHGV to deliver 3500 dwellings.
* This will add a huge burden to the surrounding infrastructure. With an estimated 9000 residents (section 105), a large level of investment will need to be made regarding roads, health, schools, shopping and work provisions. A sticking plaster approach will just not work given that many of these areas are already stretched to within breaking point.
* It just seems that not enough effort has been put into dispersing these houses across the borough. It is just lazy of the council to allocate it 1) on green belt land and 2) land from a single land owner - just to make the allocation process easier

Figure 13 - page 33 - Provision of traveller sites
* Travellers do not contribute funding in the same way that the general public do through council tax, national insurance etc. and therefore it does not seem appropriate to creating infrastructure specifically for one minority group
* That said, if traveller provisions do need to be created, surely it is better for all concerned to allocate them away from large communities and therefore the 30 allocations at DHGV would seem wholly inappropriate in that regard

Figure 22 - page 57 - New Employment Site Allocations
* The largest proportion of new employment areas are extensions onto green belt land - again along the A127 corridor, further burdening the already gridlocked roadways. The A127 is already experiencing pollution levels above EU allowable levels.
* The erosion of Greenbelt along the A127 means that there is almost no division from the urban sprawl of London and Brentwood / Basildon meaning that there will no longer be any green belt

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