Proposed Romany/Traveller Site in Hockley or Ashingdon

There are two alternative options proposed, so I understand, in Hockley, and a third alternative in Ashingdon. I am not familiar with the two options in Hockley, but understand that objections have been raised to them.

My objections are to the Ashingdon site (see paragraphs below), but I think some of them might apply to the Hockley sites.

This entails that I am opposed to all the sites so far proposed. However, this does not provide a solution to the problem.

I do not know whether or not the specification of a Romany site in the district is a statutory requirement imposed on the authority, or whether it is a precondition of the local development plan being confirmed as being in conformity with the Structure Plan. I would greatly appreciate it if you could kindly inform me whether provision of a Romany site is a statutory or Structure Plan requirement.

In my view, a Romany site needs to have the following features.

1. Latrines and foul drainage capacity linked to the foul drainage system.
2. Standpipes for water for cooking and washing.
3. The site must be divided into zones each for a caravan and space for commercial activity (eg breaking down and disposal of scrap metal).
4. Each of these zones be the subject of a Section 106 agreement (the successor to the Section 52 agreements under the 1971 Act), covering health, safety, and emission, storage and removal of pollutants. (Certain metals and chemicals in vehicles could cause poisonous leakages if left exposed to the weather.)
5. It should be near to an industrial site, to facilitate features 3 and 4 above.
6. There needs to be a recreation area, principally for the children nearby. This is to minimise the chance of inter-communal conflict between different gangs or categories of youth, which could become matters for the police.
7. The site should have access to education facilities, principally for Romany children.
8. It should not be adjacent to attractive landscape areas which are valued for their biodiversity or amenity value for recreation by ramblers and horse-riders.

A site adjacent to Cavendish Road, Oakfield Road and New Park Road, off Lower Road, Ashingdon, meets very few of the above features.

It would be expensive and awkward to fulfil features 1 and 2. Feature 3 would be compromised by legal complications arising from the area being green belt plotland, and part of the space to the east of Beckney Wood being the area of a proposed statutory common, in which Ashingdon Council is an interested party. Feature 4 would be similarly compromised. Feature 5 is not fulfilled, as the site is remote green belt plotland. Features 6 and 7 might just about be met, with supplementary financing. Feature 8 is emphatically not fulfilled, and would open up the danger of an exponentially growing scrap yard adjacent to Beckney Woods, in an area the planning history of which would probably give huge scope for evasion of and non-compliance with any Section 106 agreement conditions initially negotiated or imposed.

I recognise that Rochford District Council may have to make provision for unconventional types of land-use, when a demand for such types emerges.

However, I believe a more or less long-term solution to Romany demand cannot be achieved with the existing options on offer. I believe this demand could be met if Rochford DC could identify a hinterland to an existing industrial site where existing mains water and foul drainage capacity may already exist, and which has not yet been considered from among the options so far publicised.

Structure planning and local development control, at their best, succeeded in spatially separating different forms of land-use, where these can impinge adversely on each other. For example, New Park Road, Oakfield Road and Cavendish Road are being included in the local bridle-way system.

Local development control should separate scrap metal transport and dumping from an area of horse-riding recreation. The difficult point about the non-fulfilment of feature 8 is the danger of contaminated fallen metal or grass fragments cutting the legs of horses' hooves causing injury and infections which are difficult to treat.