Defenders of The Rochford District is a Facebook Group with 300 Members.

It is acknowledged that in the past that Rochford District Council has only counted a Petition as one objection in a public consultation.

The E - Petition process in RDC requires the Approval of The Council and this was considered inappropriate in this instance so the Defenders of The Rochford District decided to use another Petition platform. "http://chng.it/XhLTSRRwdb"

Defenders of Rochford District Petition for Pushback on housing numbers (7200) by Rochford District Council to Save Green Belt

RDC Council Leader, Simon Wootton, is asked to write to local MP's and Robert Jenrick, Secretary of State on housing numbers to challenge the Rochford District's housing targets (known as the Objectively Assessed Need, or OAN), and press for an 'Infrastructure First' approach to housing delivery from The Government.

Challenges are already being made by Councils in both Southend and Basildon and it will be advantageous for RDC to also do so to work together on the same shared issues on the "peninsula" directly with The Government.

The latest Rochford District Council's Public Consultation on its New Local Plan asks residents to give feedback on the Council's ideas about Spatial Options but it omits the most important capacity data on Infrastructure making the choices made by residents far from "Infrastructure First" and more like "Infrastructure Last". The Council's Delivery Plan for its New Local Plan shows that the next Public Consultation in 2022 showing where The Council proposes to actually build under Preferred Options will have been made without any prior input on choices from residents taking into account infrastructure capacity; doctors, other health care, public transport, schools, population growth, highway congestion, pollution, climate change data, water, sewerage etc.,

RDC Council Leader, Simon Wootton, is also asked by this Petition to withdraw the present Public Consultation until this data can be provided to residents.

Rochford District Council has recently REFUSED a Planning Application in Rochford questioning highway congestion assessments on SER8 a site approved for development in the Old LocaL Plan.

Infrastructure was apparently NOT Put First in the Old Local Plan.

It may happen again if RDC Council Leader, Simon Wootton, does not listen to residents and act in accordance with their wishes under this Petition.

Defenders of Rochford District

This Petition has received 2287 signatures of support SO FAR and although RDC may not have regard for it at the very least Councillors and Officers should be aware of the wide objection to its public consultation and bear this in mind when going forward to Public Examination in due course.

As further support of the need for this Petition would you please take due note of the content of this email.

From: Cllr Lee Scott - Member CC <Cllr.Lee.Scott@essex.gov.uk>

I refer to your email regarding the Rochford Local Plan and the provision of current and potential future new infrastructure to support the provision of sustainable transport in the District. This is a very important issue to deal with, as plans for new housing are developed in the new Rochford Local Plan that is currently being prepared by the District, which will set the strategy for future development of Rochford beyond 2025. ECC is advising Rochford planners of aspects of both transport and land use issues.

With that in mind, and the fact that there are the same pressures across the whole of south Essex, a South Essex Plan is being developed that will set out an overall strategy for development across the whole area. Building on this partnership working approach, a South Essex 2050 Memorandum of Understanding was drawn up in January 2018 which was signed by all partner authorities, including both ECC and Rochford District Council, that sets a joint approach across South Essex to collectively support economic growth and importantly in the context of your email, puts sustainable development across the sub-region at the centre of respective plans. It will also be used to effectively respond to external pressures, such as the Thames Estuary 2050 Commission and the London Plan.

Being a largely rural district in nature its growing population is exerting more and more pressures on the local highway’s network and this will continue as the population grows. The population is expected to grow to 89,494 by 2025, up from 84,815 back in 2015, an increase of 5.5%. However due to the extent of Green Belt, the District is significantly constrained in how much and where new housing can be located. Therefore, there is a relatively limited amount of policy compliant developable land available in the Rochford area.

The Councils recognise that there are strong synergies between Rochford and the surrounding areas of Essex, including in relation to transport infrastructure and economic factors. It is likely that planned growth will have an impact on the transport infrastructure in Rochford, as well as beyond on wider ECC infrastructure. In response to this strong synergy, consultants have been commissioned to look into this and to produce fresh evidence in order to understand more deeply the existing transport infrastructure and future development, in line with the Duty to Co-operate requirement guiding Local Plan development. Contained in this work there has been an assessment of sustainable travel levels in the District and this is composed of three constituent areas; non-motorised users (walking and cycling), buses and rail services. Each site for potential housing development has been scored to ascertain the level of accessibility and unsurprisingly those sites with higher scores are predominantly within or proximate to settlements. The higher scoring sites are predominantly close by to a rail station or town centre where bus facilities are also nearby.

As well as the newly commissioned work, Rochford has invested in producing an Urban Capacity Study which seeks to assess the likely ability of Rochford District to accommodate additional residential development within existing residential areas and appropriate brownfield sites. The Urban Capacity Study builds upon the findings of the study carried out on behalf of Rochford District Council in 2000, using empirical evidence to review the accuracy of the previous study and make revised predictions for future residential development.

The Local Plan is evolving and there is much work still to be done. Therefore moving forward, further results will be published as the data and evidence is analysed and interpreted. All will be subject and be guided by both current ECC and Government transport and housing policies, with the promotion and development of sustainable transport at its core in order that new communities are built as sustainably as practical; supported by high quality sustainable transport infrastructure.