There were process failures in that Rochford council failed to provide a proper consultation process :-

Rochford Council would appear to be working to an agenda based around the requirements of a Supermarket business and are in denial regarding the expressed wishes of the local residents. This is to the extent that council have appeared to consistently manipulated the consultations process, producing misleading information and consequently overriding the democratic process, with the aim of implementing the own predetermined policies.
This is supported as such by:
1.1 misrepresenting evidence (including that of its own experts, thus distorting and undermining the whole economic rationale for redevelopment) and contradiction. There is no obvious evidence or reasoning that Hockley has great retail potential and a 'Retail and Leisure Study' document actually states that Hockley has limited potential. recommending a small, "boutique" approach. as opposed to the councils support for a large supermarket and ignoring the fact that Hockley already has two supermarkets already.


The council stated that the HAAP must conform to the Core Strategy but passed two specific motions in Full Council to the contrary (9 Sept 2009 and 14 Oct 2010).
1.2 It Imposed a two-tier consultation process which discriminated against the Hockley area and it's electorate by:
* restricting public consultation and only arranging a short notice an exhibition which used previously publicly consulted material from 2010 material, which the council acknowledged was not even the current thinking. And for reasons unknown but do raise issue with the council's motives, this exhibition was not advertised until halfway through
* pre-defining the outcome: as noted above, the council incorrectly set requirements based on the Core Strategy
* limiting the time available: the two other AAPs have more time and more consultation.
compared with similar, Area Action Plan studies for Rochford and Rayleigh, which were included in the same contract. The parallel action plans for Rayleigh and Rochford have been allowed more time and more consultation opportunity, despite the potential impact on those areas being much smaller. FoI response showing Traffic Assessments have been made for Rochford and Rayleigh but not for Hockley (later denied by the council).

1.3 manipulating and ignoring public consultations (contravening RDC's own Statement of Community Involvement). RDC have demonstrably determined the next step of the way forward before analysing the outcomes of earlier consultations, thereby rendering those consultations meaningless.

1.4 The Council appear to have total mislead residents by repeatedly stating highways issues would be included in the HAAP but, in fact, has not included them . Given the significant traffic issues that Hockley has with traffic flows from outside the area, this would appear to be an act of gross negligent and a missed opportunity to address most resident's major concern.
2, Failures in the HAAP proposals resulting in it not being "sound"
It is difficult to see how this plan is viable and it does appear to be unsound in a number of areas.