West Of Braintree Garden Community: Issues and Options Consultation December 2017 Q1 Do you agree with the content of the Vision? Is anything missing? What are the priorities? Whilst the Vision focuses on a desirable end state this will take over twenty years to achieve. The priority should be to provide the public infrastructure at the start and not the end, and to design the build in such a way as to ensure early residents and businesses are not living in a dormitory settlement with poor infrastructure and no services and thus are on reliant on private vehicles which will pollute and congest the existing infrastructure which is inadequate to cope with the housing envisaged. The Vision does not adequately explain how local residents will be able to access facilities other than ‘local’ facilities, and even local facilities need to be better defined and clear timescales given as to when they will be provided. The Vision also omits any discussion as to how the residents of the new Garden Community will integrate and interact with existing settlements. The Vision includes land in Uttlesford District Council and UDC have not yet even decided as a Council whether they wish to promote this Vision as part of their Local Plan proposal.
Q2 Do you support the Charter Principles? Is there anything missing? As with the Vision statement, the principles are admirable, but it is unclear how they are to be achieved and whether they are financially viable. One specific example of this is Principle 10 - Innovative Delivery Structure. The different options outlined in the document would have vastly different implications for the Garden Community from an economic point of view. On this point, we would strongly support the formation of a New Town Development Corporation possibly covering all of the planned North Essex Garden Communities. As with the post-war New Towns, this should have compulsory purchase powers to acquire the land at agricultural value to ensure that local landowners do not enjoy windfall planning gains and to finance the necessary public infrastructure.
Q3 Do you support the emerging approach to green infrastructure? In preparing your response, you may like to consider: •Parts of the site to be protected •The sorts of public open space that are needed – parks, sports, play areas, natural places •The importance of gardens and other private outside spaces •How these spaces can be made available and accessible to everyone •How they should be owned and maintained •What are the open space priorities? While we welcome the emphasis in this approach on protecting and enhancing existing habitats and landscape structures, we are concerned that the current ‘area of search’ (pages 6 & 11 of the document) is very broad, and includes areas such as Andrewsfield, Boxted Wood and other local wildlife sites (as shown on page 11) that would need protection. ‘Protect and enhance’ should mean more than simply maintaining these areas in a sea of concrete - the vistas and views that can be currently enjoyed over them should be protected and enhanced. The two corridors proposed, together with ‘buffer zones’ around sensitive sites, would be the best way of achieving this but much more work and clarity on this aspect is needed before it can be supported.
Q4 Do you support the emerging approach to integrated and sustainable transport? We welcome the improved public transport facilities and cycleways outlined in the document, but we are very sceptical about what will be achieved in practice. We question whether what is being proposed is sufficient for a development of this magnitude especially the complete lack of alternative transport modes for longer journeys to London and Cambridge. Some would appear to be alternates. For example, while the new Beaulieu Park railway is now planned for 2022, this date has been pushed back on many occasions and it is not clear if current plans for the new station would support a further 12,000 new homes in the area (for example, will there be enough parking provision?). The document seems to focus exclusively on connections to Stansted, Chelmsford and the A120 corridor, and to give no consideration to the potential links to the north - Cambridge and the surrounding areas. As the latter are already a high employment growth area, and are likely to continue as such, this is a worrying omission. Currently it is possible, for example, to drive north from Blake End to the Cambridge area via Great Saling, Great Bardfield, Thaxted and Saffron Waldon. This route is much shorter than accessing the M11 at Junction 8 via the A120, and often very little different in time. However, it uses narrow B roads which would be unable to cope with the volume of traffic which the proposed Garden Community could generate. In short, future planning needs to give proper consideration to roads access to the North of the site towards Cambridge. We would not want to see further northern traffic through Great Saling on the current roads. The documents’ approach to car parking is unsatisfactory. One particular weakness is that it makes no diction between car ownership and car use. While high quality public transport systems may reduce car use, car ownership is likely to continue at a high level if real per capita incomes continue to grow, and methods need to be found to accommodate this within the Garden Community. Best
practices, including more extensive use of underground parking, should be investigated, and sensible ratios used in planning. An approach based on limiting car ownership via limiting parking opportunities is extremely shortsighted, and will result in the ‘car blight’ observable at Beaulieu Park.
Q5,6,7,8 Do you support the emerging approach to employment opportunity? Do you support the emerging approach to the living environment? Do you support the emerging approach to smart and sustainable living? Do you support the emerging approach to good design? To describe these sections as an ‘emerging approach’ is an overstatement: they contain either openended questions (eg ‘How to attract new small and medium enterprises and employers looking to relocate’) or broad, uncontentious statements intent with no plan as to how they are to be achieved (eg ‘cutting edge digital communications, designed for ultra-fast broadband and 5G from the outset and future-proofed for simple upgrades). As a result, it is impossible to agree or disagree with these ‘emerging approaches’. Braintree is not an employment area of choice for most businesses / employers as it has to compete against Chelmsford, Colchester, Harlow and Cambridge, all of which are employment destinations of choice. It is therefore questionable whether the proposed employment opportunities that are envisaged are realistic, particularly the ‘aspiration’ to create one new job per house as there is no evidence whatsoever to support this aspiration. There will be obvious implications for the demands on the transport infrastructure if this vision is not achieved. It is disappointing that an ‘issues and options’ consultation has not studied and reported back on which initiatives have worked well in other garden communities and new towns in Europe and elsewhere, and identified genuine costed options and issues so respondents can consider the tradeoffs involved. Presumably one such trade-off is between the level of housing provision and the provision of land for commercial and industrial use. There must be studies which have examined how this balance is best achieved - but none are reported on here. One approach which seems missing from each of these areas is that of running competitions (for design, smart technology schemes etc) with prizes awarded to the most innovative approaches. Commercial organisations could find this attractive, not least for the publicity they would attract.
Q9 - Do you support the emerging approach to community engagement? No – while the document promises that ‘the Garden Community’s development will be guided by a locally-led vision, and ongoing and meaningful public and stakeholder participation (p38)’, this has not been the experience of existing settlements to date. For example, all of the Local Parish Councils, who represent the local community, are strongly opposed to the proposal, but no account seems to have been taken of their opposition in this document. In addition, the proposed Garden Community Development has not yet been ratified or approved by an independent Planning Inspector.
One particular difficulty for those wishing to participate is that the area of search remains very wide, and that this ‘Issues and Options’ document does not in fact look at the different site options outlined in the AECOM document of May 2017 – perhaps because these just referred to developments within the Braintree District Council area. If councils – particularly Uttlesford - are not aligned, ‘ongoing and meaningful public and stakeholder participation’ is impossible. This is part of the wider difficulty that, within this ‘Issues and Options’ consultation, there are no options presented where local residents might express a view. However, in order to help the process, attached to our response is a summary of the key findings from the residents’ survey which we completed last year as an input into our emerging Neighbourhood Plan. Can we draw your attention in particular to the importance that local residents attach to the facilities at Andrewsfield – 92% of the respondents values it either very highly (69%) or highly (23%). As with Qs 5-8, evidence on how other new settlement have achieved community engagement would be helpful. In terms of engaging existing communities, both Stebbing and the Salings are currently developing Neighbourhood Plans. It would be helpful to have these groups involved in the planning of any new garden community if it were to go ahead. A useful place to start on community engagement would be to check with existing voluntary organisations (for example, tennis and football clubs, local schools, churches and religious groups) in Braintree and local villages what community facilities are in demand. Some facilities might be interested in relocating to a greenfield site with improved access and parking.
Q10 - Do you support the emerging approach to active local stewardship? Q12 - Do you support the emerging approach to innovative delivery structure? We have already commented on this point in answer to Q2, where we emphasised the need for new Town Development Corporation powers, including compulsory land purchase, to ensure that local landowners do not make windfall planning gains. If this approach is not followed it is questionable if this proposal is financially viable. We would welcome further clarification as to how the LDV would operate and what its powers would be. We would note that consideration needs to be given to the size of the likely balance sheet of such a LDV/New Town Corporation, and what central government guarantees would be needed to make it viable. We are concerned that the balance sheets of the one/two local councils would be insufficient (especially given the caps placed on their ability raise rates by central government) to allow an LDV to be a subsidiary of the local council(s). In this connection we note that the Kerslake Peer Review raised similar balance sheet issues for local councils.
Q13 - Do you have any comments on the potential boundary of the Garden Community?
The clarification as to why buffer zones need to be included within the designated spatial area is helpful. However, most residents in existing communities are more concerned with the planned area for development than the overall boundary. As there is already an existing study on this (AECOM’s Concept Framework for North Essex Garden Communities, published in May 2017) we are not clear why this issues and options consultation has not sought views on which of the options outlined there is preferred.
Do you support the emerging approach to integrated and your response, you may like to consider: