NEWS

The Felsted Neighbourhood Plan – Pre-Submission Draft is now available via the Neighbourhood Plan Website.

The Neighbourhood Plan Steering group has invested a huge amount of their own time to help the Parish establish a Plan and we all owe them a debt of gratitude for the work they have undertaken.

The Plan will set out how the community wish to see Felsted develop over the coming 15 years, including for important local facilities like the doctors’ surgery, taking important aspects of local control, rather than leaving the process in the hands of developers and the Uttlesford Local Plan.

Every household will receive a summary document through the post. In addition, the full document can be read online or in selected locations around the Parish. Details are on the Neighbourhood Plan site.

Please read the full news item on the Neighbourhood Plan site, where you can submit comments via the “Survey Monkey” link.

The Uttlesford Local Plan has now reached the final consultation stage before it is reviewed by the Government Inspector.

The full plan can be read here.

You can submit your comments here. The consultation closes at 5pm on 13 August 2018.

The points which Felsted Parish Council believe are important are:

West of Braintree development

The proposal for a 13,000 house new town, straddling Uttlesford and Braintree districts, has been found unsound by the Government Inspector in his review of the Braintree District Local Plan (as part of the North Essex Garden Partnership). See our earlier new item here.

Despite this, Uttlesford (UDC) has decided to keep the smaller part of the proposed development in its plan. This would result in up to 3,500 houses being built in Uttlesford, to the north of Felsted, approximately 1000 of which would be in the current plan period.

Felsted Parish Council remains against this development and believes that it is unsustainable. 

House building in Felsted Parish

Felsted is identified as a type A village and is expected to accept  a share of the 14,000 planned houses for the coming 15 years. There are 2 sites identified by Uttlesford in our Parish for development in the plan period, totalling up to 70 houses. Full details can be read in the regulation 19 document on page 203 onwards.

Land north of Station Road for 40 houses.

Land east of Braintree Road for 30 houses.

It should be noted that the Felsted Neighbourhood Plan, which will conditionally support some housing in Felsted during the 15 year Plan period, where community benefit can be realised, is in the final stages of completion prior to public consultation in the coming weeks.  This will be delivered to every house in summary form, and be available to view in detail online and at a number of locations, before the closing date of the Local Plan consultation. This will enable parishoners to view and consider the 2 plans alongside each other.

Stansted airport

Following our concerns that UDC’s position regarding Stansted airport was lacking in support for the communities impacted by the airport, your Parish Council has worked with our District Councillors to ensure that the Plan wording was more appropriate.

The Plan wording was rewritten and Felsted Parish Council now supports UDC in the Plan statements, taking a firm position in relation to representing the concerns of communities overflown by planes, and in taking a clear position against any increase in night flights.

Current plans for 10,000 new homes under the Garden Community (GC) principle, located to the north of Felsted, have been declared ‘unsound’ by the Government’s Inspector of Local Plans.

Felsted Parish Council has argued against the plans, primarily on the grounds of lack of facilities and infrastructure, and the impact on Felsted from traffic heading south from the new town and into the wider local road network.

In his letter, link here, the inspector lays out his reasons for the rejection:

‘It will be evident from the foregoing discussion that I consider that the Garden Community proposals contained in the Plan are not adequately justified and have not been shown to have a reasonable prospect of being viably developed.  As submitted, they are therefore unsound…’

‘… on the basis of the evidence I have considered so far I would advise that simultaneously bringing forward three GCs on the scale proposed in the submitted Plan is likely to be difficult to justify.’

‘Option 1 would be for the NEAs to agree to remove the GC proposals from the Section 1 Plan at this stage, and commit to submitting a partial revision of Section 1 for examination by a defined time, for example within two or three years.’

‘I expect that this letter will come as a disappointment to the NEAs after all the hard work and resources they have committed to bringing the Section 1 Plan forward for examination.  Nonetheless, I hope it will be appreciated that my findings do not necessarily represent a rejection of their commendable ambitions for high-quality, strategic-scale development in North Essex.  Equally, however, the scale of those ambitions, and the long timescale over which any GC proposals would come forward, require that adequate time and care are taken now to ensure that any proposals are realistic and robust.’

This rejection of the Plan submitted by the North Essex Garden Community (NEGC) group, on behalf of the District Councils,  will also impact the  ‘West of Braintree’ new town element of Uttlesford’s Local Plan, currently in the final stages of development.

It is unclear at this stage how the District Councils will respond to the Inspector’s report and whether or not they intend to follow his guidance to remove the new town proposals from their Plans.

We will continue to follow progress, as the plans could still come forward, and will object where we believe there are inappropriate and poorly planned new town developments.

The Parish Council is holding an OPEN MORNING this  Saturday, 2nd June, from 9 – 1pm in the Felsted Memorial Hall.

Please take this opportunity to drop in and have an informal chat with your Parish Councillors over a cup of tea and a biscuit.

We would love to hear your thoughts about how the Parish Council is doing.

This is also your opportunity to tell us your worries and concerns about the Parish, and to talk to us about any ideas you have about future projects you would like the Council to consider.

Parish Council elections are due to take place in June 2019, and if you’re interested in joining the Council it’s also an ideal time to find out exactly what is involved in the role.

We hope that you can join us.

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Felsted Church Tower Open Day

Saturday 5^th May 2018

10am – 1pm

Climb to the top of the tower and see the bells

Watch the bells being rung

Have a go at ringing a bell

A lot of ringers were killed in The Great War.  One hundred years later it seems entirely appropriate to recruit some more.

You could be one of them!

The date of the Annual Parish Assembly has been changed to Thursday 26 April. The venue is unchanged, in the URC Hall at 7.00pm.

Come along and hear what has been happening in the Parish over the last year and tell the Council what you think we should be focussing on in the coming months and year.

Further to our previous news item here,  concerning the application from Stansted airport to increase passenger numbers to 43million, from the current level of 25million, Uttlesford District Council has extended the planning application comments deadline to 30th April.

You therefore still have 5 days to submit your comments.

Felsted Parish Council has objected to the application. You can read our submission here.

Our objection continues to be based on arguments that Stansted airport’s expansion plans must receive national determination against national air traffic plans and  environmental targets. It is wrong for this to receive only District level review and wrong for Uttlesford to determine an application in which they have a financial interest.

Furthermore, we continue to argue that the airport must first resolve the noise nuisance problems caused by the flightpath changes made in 2016, and which have resulted in a 20 fold increase in noise complaints.

We are also concerned about the hidden clause on the 2,900 page application, which allows Stansted airport to lobby for increases in night flights.

Comments can be submitted via UDC’s website here.

Please see the important message below from the Neighbourhood Plan Steering Group about forthcoming presentations on the 13th (7pm) or 14th April (10am) at the Memorial Hall.

Over the last three years your Neighbourhood Plan Steering Group has been working hard to produce a genuinely ambitious Neighbourhood Plan that delivered everything you have asked for during our consultations.  For many months now most of our policies have been completed and we have been ready to bring the plan forward to a pre-referendum consultation.  As we hope you know, pivotal to our ambitions has been our efforts to deliver a Community Hub that would alleviate the congestion in the centre of the village and ensure access to amenities – like the doctors and the village shop – for the next 20 years and beyond.

However, despite our strenuous efforts, we have been unable to gain control of a suitable and accessible site close to the centre of the Parish that enjoys sufficient support from all the key stakeholders.  We are sorry and I am personally disappointed to say that we are therefore unable to deliver the Hub that we believed would have been an exciting and lasting asset to our community.

It may be, given more time, that we might have been able to secure a suitable site but, all the time we wait developers and landowners are coming forward with proposals for housing that we don’t support and which the Parish Council is powerless to resist because the Uttlesford Local Plan has been rejected and an acceptable 5 year housing supply pipeline cannot be identified.  If the Neighbourhood Plan is in place we have sound policies that at least offer some chance to control development in our parish.

So, with great reluctance we have been forced to abandon the Community Hub element of the Neighbourhood Plan.

We are now going quickly to bring forward a revised plan that offers protection against over-development in Felsted.  In so doing, we have been mindful of the pressure on the Parish through UDC for additional housing.  Our NP cannot prevent all development in the Parish, but our hope is now, by accepting some limited development,we will have met UDC’s needs for more housing and still have achieved some material gains for our community.

Please come along to the presentation on the 13th (7pm) or 14th April (10am) at the Memorial Hall to hear more.

Kind regards,

Roy A C Ramm

Chairman

Felsted Neighbourhood Plan Steering Group

Further to our earlier news items, we have now written to Uttlesford District Council, calling for the expansion application to be reviewed at national level, against national planning and environmental targets and for us to be given time to consider the thousands of pages of documentation.

You can read our letter here.

We are calling for more time to allow due consideration of the thousands of pages of documents submitted in support of the application. UDC has currently allowed only 6 weeks to submit comments, which also includes the Easter Holiday period. We have argued that this is little more time than would be allowed to consider a loft extension, and cannot be right for a major infrastructure project, resulting in a 44% increase in air traffic when compared to today’s levels.

Comments can be submitted via UDC’s website here.  There are also drop in events organised by the airport, details are here.

These events are timed to give, in the case of the final event, only one working day between the event and the deadline for submission of comments.

We have again objected to this undue haste to process the application. Even Highways England have said that they cannot meet the required deadline, and will not respond before 25th May.

However, without confirmation of a reconsideration by UDC of the process, we must assume that comments will close on 3rd April and anyone wishing to make a comment should therefore do so before this date.

Felsted Parish Council will be  making a submission that Stansted airport’s expansion plans must receive national determination against national air traffic plans and  environmental targets. It is wrong for this to receive only District level review. Furthermore, we shall state that the airport must first resolve the noise nuisance problems caused by the flightpath changes made in 2016, and which have resulted in a 20 fold increase in noise complaints.

You can also read more here on the SSE website, also calling for national determination of the application.

The popular Green Waste skip service is due to begin on 8 April.

As with previous years, the skip will operate at Bannister Green on Sundays between 9-10am.

The service will run through to 25th November 2018.