Hockley Area Action Plan Submission Document

Anyone who either shops or drives in Hockley should be concerned with the District Council's recently published proposals for regenerating the centre of Hockley, the HAAP.

There is the likelihood of a new "medium" sized supermarket of up to 3,000 sq metres (that nearly six times the size of the existing Co-op). There are concerns that a supermarket this large will overwhelm the existing shops and result in less competition and, in turn, higher prices. It is also contrary to the Council's own experts, who recommended that Hockley should be redeveloped along small, "boutique" lines.

There are also plans for a public square, with an evening culture of bars and cafes, and around 100 new homes. Clearly this will all change the character of the 'village' against the wishes of residents.

This makes 150 new dwellings in Hockley made up of 50 recently given planning permission in West Hockley and the 100 in the Centre. So with the 976 dwellings already given planning permission in the Central part of the District the additional 100 takes the total well over 1000 (1026). There are 326 new dwellings just for Hockley and Hawkwell.

We cannot see how the overall highways infrastructure can cope without major improvements.

However, the main concern is the impact on traffic and parking. The Council has repeatedly promised that highway considerations would be included in the Hockley Area Action Plan (HAAP) but, in a the last minute U-turn, did not do so arguing that it could save money leaving it to a planning application to pay for this.

But

Essex County Council, advises that "On a local level every strategic development proposal is accompanied by a transport assessment, the scope of which must be agreed with the Highway Authority. This assessment considers the impact the proposed development will have on the highway network and includes industry standard forecasted growth (TEMPRO) to ensure a comprehensive approach that accounts for present traffic conditions (including any new and committed development) and future traffic growth."

The Council "considers" that the Spa Roundabout could be improved through the provision of 3 slip lanes and a wider pavement beside the Spa pub. There is no evidence to support this view or whether it is even physically viable. The Council has only allowed £2-300K for the cost of this work, which looks optimistic given that they allowed up to £2M for the same work in the Council's costings for the Core Strategy.

The Council also proposes to move the Hockley Station car park in to Eldon Way, and build more houses on the existing car park. Whilst this has some attractions, it would reverse much of the traffic flows under the railway bridge and, again, the Council say they have not modelled the impact. So it is not known how this will change traffic flows through Hockley, including extra volumes from all the new housing in the West of the District.

Parking also looks very tight with just 211 places proposed for shopping and 72 for the station and requires assessment. The Rail Station Car Park is often almost full with 159 places so how is just 72 sustainable?

The Council states that to be Sound the plan (HAAP) should be prepared based on a strategy which seeks to meet objectively assessed development and infrastructure requirements, including unmet requirements from neighbouring authorities where it is reasonable to do so and consistent with achieving sustainable development.

As stated earlier Essex County Council, advises "On a local level every strategic development proposal is accompanied by a transport assessment, the scope of which must be agreed with the Highway Authority. This assessment considers the impact the proposed development will have on the highway network and includes industry standard forecasted growth (TEMPRO) to ensure a comprehensive approach that accounts for present traffic conditions (including any new and committed development) and future traffic growth."

As the HAAP is a proposal for strategic development then according to ECC this must be accompanied by a transport assessment, the scope of which must be agreed with the Highway Authority. This assessment considers the impact the proposed development will have on the highway network and includes industry standard forecasted growth (TEMPRO) to ensure a comprehensive approach that accounts for present traffic conditions (including any new and committed development) and future traffic growth.

1) the existing need to deal with the bottleneck at the Spa mini-roundabout will no doubt be exaggerated in the future by extra traffic volume from the increased number of retail shoppers from the District as a whole as well as from the 1000 new houses to be built in the surrounding area which is the clearly identfiable central part of the District.

2) a potential new problem s created by the Council's recent decision to move the Hockley Rail Station car park to the Eldon Way site, thus reversing existing flows under the narrow railway bridge, which often requires one-way traffic flows when a bus, or large vehicle, is trying to pass through the bridge.

If the necessary entrepreneurial, risk taking developer(s) were reluctant to meet the indicated financial costs, the whole HAAP could fail to be taken forward and regeneration will be impacted. Or, possibly the options of moving the car park may need to be discarded, restricting the scope of any changes rendering the scheme non viable.

Deferring the transport assessments also effectively suggests that the whole redevelopment will need to be undertaken as a single project. Otherwise different developers addressing parts of the scheme could come up with different, contradictory or more likely only partial highways proposals which together do not address the whole of the highway improvement needs.

Based on the financial information in the Council's viability assessment, a single project would be an extremely large undertaking which would increase the risks to the developer and if there were a failure then the whole regeneration could fail.

Highway issues are integral to the overall success of the project and such be addressed at this stage as guided by the advice obtained from ECC.

The Planning Inspector is asked to reject the HAAP and return this to Council with the requirement to await the formal and reported assessment of the strategic effect of such proposed strategic development on Highways infrastructure in Rochford District by ECC.