Published by Rothay House, Mayfield Road, Eastrea
Eastrea Village News No 18: April 2009
FENLAND REJECTS £1 million GIFT Many years of planning — and a pile of complex documentation over a yard high — have come to nothing. The plan for our village hall, designed for us by Ellis Miller, was rejected by the Councillors of the Planning Committee of Fenland District Council. Planning officers were very supportive of our scheme; we were even through to the final short-list for a £500,000 grant from the Big Lottery Fund. It would have added up
to a gift of a £1 million muchneeded community centre from the people of Eastrea to the entire district. The reasons for the rejection have already been reported in the columns of the Cambs Times. Fenland were told that the development was ‘not within the Development Area Boundary’. That simply is not true! The site for the hall (H on the map, below) is within the boundary (B, marked in red). Indeed, the hall is in Fenland’s ‘District Wide Plan’, which the same Planning Committee
published many years ago. The Committee were also told that the project would fill in the remaining space between Eastrea and Coates. This is equally false. The end of Eastrea (shown by a white line, below) lies far from the development, and the open roadside (blue line) remains untouched between the two villages. Surprisingly, Fenland District Council have decided to
omit the remarks from their Minutes of the meeting, though the Village Hall Trust are making sure that they are recorded. Our team are in touch with the Attorney General, the Treasury Solicitor, a London barrister from the Charity Commission, two planning solicitors, the Ombudsman, the Compliance Officer and the Standards Board! Watch this space for developments.