Rochford District Council’s Development Control Committee met this evening to consider their response to the planning application to extend the runway at Southend Airport. The planning application has been submitted to Southend Borough Council as the land affected is in their jurisdiction, but Rochford District Council is a consultee as the decision affects residents of Rochford too.
Rochford Council was, it seems, anticipating trouble as there was a police presence at the venue. By the time your correspondent arrived, the meeting hall was already packed and so the remaining members of the public, of which there were over thirty, had to brave the cold and listen to the meeting through a loudspeaker outside the building. A steward providing copies of the documentation estimated that there were 70-100 members of the public present inside the meeting.
From outside the meeting, we were left lacking a number of significant pieces of information, most notably the results of the vote which was conducted by a show of hands only. Members of the public outside the meeting were not given copies of the maps being discussed.
Hopefully, someone who was inside the meeting room can furnish us with more details so that these can be added.
No doubt, minutes of the meeting will be available in due course on the Rochford District Council website.
- Agenda for the DCC Meeting
- Report on Rochford’s opinion of the planning application
- Addendum to Item 4 and 5 Report (see first item)
Tags: Development Control Committee, Rochford District Council
By 7.15 the hall was ‘full’ and people were still crowding to get in. I asked a slightly anxious Mr Scrutton if it would not be possible to close the back doors and get another half dozen people across the space. But, looking at the floor and avoiding my eyes, he muttered something about health and safety and by 7.20, a burly policeman had arrived and quietly ushered people away from the entrance to the Council Chamber.
It was kind of them to discuss the airport and Coombes Farm Development first, no doubt in order to get back to the sanctity of a normal meeting, and surprised to find that there are no less than 38 people on the Devellopment Committee, as opposed to 17 in Southend.
The maps used that Denis could not see were not much different to the ones already flashed about at various meetings, but it was interesting to hear Mr Scrutton referring to the plan to ‘sever Eastwoodbury Lane’ and construct a new link road. The word usually bandied about is ‘redirected’.
Rochford has NOT agreed to air space over Rochford being used more (though it is hard to see what they can do about that now that they have given the go-ahead) and amazing to hear Mr Cutmore saying that he was glad that there was now ‘no risk at all to St Laurence church’. That’s one of the officers who has not looked closely at the map but has been mesmerised by the spin uttered from the airport.
All Councillors voted in favour of the Planning Application – there was not one dissenting arm raised. There was more controversy about the new Control Tower, described as a monstrosity by Councillor Glynn -”Why can’t they put it somewhere else?” she asked.
I stayed for the debate on Coombes Farm, as the two issues were loosely connected. It was stated that the air quality in South Street, Rochford, would be severely affected by the addition of all the proposed houses on the Coombes Farm Development, but they had not mentioned the effects on air quality of the 53,300 planes a year intended for the airport.
They said that the development was not in accord with the Local plan or the Core Strategy for Rochford; one of the reasons given was that the plan is to use Green Belt Land. It is strange, then that this did not stop them putting four car franchises at the end of Cherry Orchard Way ON GREEN BELT LAND or accepting in the previous discussions on the Joint Area Action Plan that GREEN BELT LAND would be used for the Saxon Business Park that is proposed for the west of Rochford. Perhaps this end of the market town is not important enough or the Develoment Committee to discuss, as it is development on the Eastwood side of their jurisdiction! “We hgave worked hard to protect our Green Belt” they said.
The Public Safety Zone was also brought in as an objection to development, but is is unclear how they intend to address the propoerties that are currently in the PSz in Rochford.
One of the last comments I caught was that both Fossett’s Farm Roundabout and Warner’s Bridge were at 150% overused already, according to traffic surveys conducted in Southend, so they could not allow more houses and 300 more cars to add to the chaos at peak times – so the airport is not going to generate any traffic, then?
Kiti