Firstly may I thank the officers of the Council for their time at the public meeting held on 16 January 2018. I note with regret that more senior members of council planning staff were not available to justify or answer questions about the plans and hope that they will be more visible to residents in the future.

Before I raise specific issues about the plan, I feel I must point out that in drafting the document, the Council has started from an incorrect position from which it will now be very difficult to recover, namely that there is a need for 7,500 new dwellings in the area. As your council planning officer explained the figure of 7,500 is based on a standard model developed by the Government and takes into account no local factors. However, unfortunately this ludicrous figure of 7,500 has now set the bar of expectation with both opposition (the majority of residents) and pro-development (developers and land-owners) parties.

The Council should have started from a position that given the known opposition of existing residents to plans for major development, evidenced by the huge opposition to the Hall Road development (of 620 houses), combined with the factors weighing against further development, little additional development is considered appropriate in the local area and a figure of perhaps 250 homes offered as the most that could be absorbed. The starting position adopted by the Council is a major strategic error for which the Director of Planning must take full responsibility.

It is clear both from the factors outlined below and the opposition to the plan from existing council tax paying residents, that any further development of significant scale is unsustainable and the council should rethink this plan to arrive at a more acceptable and sustainable solution.

Major traffic congestion - The B1013 is the main road through Hawkwell and Hockley connecting the towns to Rochford and Rayleigh. This road is already heavily congested at peak periods such as "rush hour" and "school run" times. It also carries traffic to what is becoming a major airport and the major business park at the airport that is currently undergoing very significant expansion. Of particular concern is the junction of Spa Road, Woodlands Road and Southend Road (the mini-roundabout opposite The Spa public house), which is a major "pinch-point".

Impact on public safety - The two Fire Stations managed by Essex County Fire & Rescue Service at Hawkwell and Rochford, respectively, are manned on a "retained" basis. This means that fire crews are alerted to incidents by means of a radio-pager and aim to reach the fire station within 4-5 minutes. Additional traffic created by further residential and commercial development in the area will increase turn-out times thereby increasing the time it takes the Fire Service to attend incidents, placing those needing assistance at additional risk.

Air polution - At certain times of the day, the air pollution caused by current major traffic congestion in some parts of Hockley and Hawkwell is already likely to be in breach of the standards set by the European Commission (Directives 2008/50/EC and 2004/107/EC). However, as the Council has been reluctant to carry out appropriate air quality monitoring it has been left to a group of independent councillors to undertake a 12 month study the results of which are due shortly. Clearly, the additional traffic resulting from further housing and commercial development will add to the toxic level of pollution in the atmosphere adding to the misery of those suffering with respiratory medical conditions and to the detriment of the health of residents. However, it is not only the excessive vehicle traffic that causes high levels of pollution. It must be appreciated that having a significant airport within the immediate vicinity is a major cause of both air and noise pollution.

Green Belt Development - Major developments suggested on major areas of green belt land between Gusted Hall Lane and Mount Bovers Lane would cause significant damage to the environment and have a dramatically negative impact on the landscape of the area. Not only would it destroy an important wildlife area but also productive arable farming land would be lost forever. Greenbelt land should be protected with any development limited to Brownfield and "in-fill" development to ensure the essential character of Hawkwell is maintained.

Developments absent from the plan and errors in mapping - There appears to be developments that have been approved that are absent from the plan. For example, the approval of circa. 70 homes on the site of the former Bullwood Hall prison are not even mentioned and their impact is not considered. The area marked on the map for prospective development in Hillside Avenue, Hawkwell is a small rear garden with no access and unsuitable for development. These are important omissions and errors that need to be corrected.

Independence of AECOM - Within the document, the Council refers to the draft scoping report prepared by "independent consultants" AECOM. A look at AECOM's annual report for 2017 shows very clearly, large multi-national and highly aggressive organisation focussed primarily on its own commercial objectives. For such an organisation to be successful it will be dependent on strong relationships with developers and construction companies, who stand to benefit from large building projects. The Council may wish to consider this when preparing tenders for further work and ensuring that any relationships AECOM may have with parties who stand to benefit from large developments are fully transparent and to seek assurances that no conflict of interest is present.

Information Asymmetry - The council tax payers expect the council planning team to be the "experts" in the area of planning policy and we expect them to produce credible proposals to safeguard the integrity and existing nature of the local area for residents. Instead what has been produced is a long, meandering and sometimes complex document containing vast quantities of largely irrelevant data and very little by way of evidence, with the apparent purpose of deterring engagement from residents. Even simple traffic surveys and existing air quality data are absent from the document, presumably because the facts would not support the case for over development that the Council is clearly promoting. Residents expect the council to be protecting their interests in discussions such as these as residents do not have access to the amount of information and resources that parties such as developers and large construction companies have at their disposal.

Conclusion - In conclusion, there are sadly very few, if any, positive proposals in the plan for existing residents and I am left wondering what we are in fact paying our council tax for?

The New Local Plan document does not, as it claims, "set out a shared vision for the future of our district" as it does not take any account of the strong views of most existing residents who are opposed to this so called "vision".

The Council planning team has missed a significant opportunity to put forward proposals to improve the district for the residents of Hawkwell and surrounding areas and instead is bending over backwards to support major developers who are only concerned about profit and greedy landowners who see an opportunity to make a "killing" from their assets, to the detriment of the majority of residents.

I call for far greater transparency in the communications that have clearly been ongoing between prospective site owners and Council officials to ensure that the public have a full picture of how this initial set of sites has been derived.

Given that a plan already exists up until 2025, it is far too early to consider further development as the alleged "evidence" on which the proposals are based will change e.g. the increased level of traffic from developments under construction but not yet completed. The proposals put forward are clearly not sustainable and do not strike the right balance between environmental, economic and social factors and are not in the best interests of current residents of the area.