WELCOME TO FELSTED

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