INTRODUCTION:
DEVELOPING UTTLESFORD
Consultation runs from Monday 15th February to Friday 9th April.
Uttlesford District Council have published a consultation concerning the provision of
housing in the District. A copy of this consultation has been sent to residents in
Uttlesford but as our village is within Braintree District Council we are not being sent
copies. We believe all residents should know about the proposals and have the
opportunity of making their view known. The consultation is known as “CORE
STRATEGY CONSULTATION”.
The document consults Uttlesford residents on the proposed sites for 4,000 new
houses. The Uttlesford District Council’s (UDC) preferred option is to place 3,000 of
these houses on one site. Two of the six sites included in the consultation are on the
Stebbing/Saling border adjacent to Stebbing Green. This is obviously of great
concern to Great Saling Parish Council and we have prepared some notes which we
feel might help you comment on some of the issues involved.
There are seven questions in the Consultation document. We will try to deal with the
issues involved in each of these. We strongly urge you to respond to this consulation
since the strength of feeling in the village needs to be communicated to UDC.
Obviously residents in all the other affected villages will also be encouraged by their
Parish Councils to make their representations known. Nobody wants this housing on
their doorstep but most of this housing is going to be built on green fields.
As you will see below, the real threat if UDC’s preferred Option 4 is selected, is that
in the event of the Elsenham site (3000 houses) not being chosen then the focus for
the 3000 houses site could well turn to Stebbing/Saling, i.e. Boxted Wood/
Andrewsfield. This would be in spite of our many reasons (as set out below in our
commentary under Question 2) as to why these sites are clearly unsustainable and
unsuitable for such development. Therefore we strongly urge everyone to respond to
this consultation.
The consultation is available on the UDC website www.uttlesford.gov.uk/corestrategy
We have obtained a copy of the consultation; Lee and Julie in The White Hart have
kindly agreed that it will be available to read during opening hours.
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