Most of the Wickford residents are opposed to the building of a 5/6 storey block of flats at 3-21 Runwell Road. Yet all seem to think that it is a done deal because it was "approved some time ago" and "exploratory work was briefly started".
Well, maybe that view should be challenged, and there are three main arguments for this:
1. The original planning application was unsafe.
Planning Application 06/00001/FULL dated 6 Jan 2006 was for 84 flats, and was submitted on behalf of Butie Limited and Northshore Holdings Limited. These companies were incorporated in Niue in the British Virgin Islands, where the directors do not need to be named, so we don't know who was behind the plan. Why? What have they got to hide? Are they money launderers, drug dealers, criminals, terrorists?
We strongly believe that Basildon Council should not have been complicit in dealings with such secretive companies. If they WERE made aware of the people involved, then the residents of Wickford should also have been told, and this is why we think that the planning application was 'unsafe'. It represented a threat to public safety, and should be annulled.
2. The way that the planning process was concluded was 'against the public interest'
The above planning application was originally refused planning permission, (thanks to the voting power of our elected councillors on the committee). We in the Wickford Action Group were aware that the developers were appealing this decision, and once the appeal/planning meeting was arranged, we and many residents were braced to attend the meeting in Basildon. We were overjoyed to hear that the developer had now withdrawn the appeal and the agenda item was cancelled. But we then found out that the developer had submitted a simultaneous appeal which they requested would be a 'hearing by written correspondence', and that this had been given approval by Daphne Mair, a government inspector! There was no representation of the public! This is what the Echo said at the time
So much for the transparency of local government. We challenged this process at the time without success, but nevertheless believe that it went against robust planning guidelines, and that the decision should be reversed.
3. THIRTEEN YEARS have elapsed since the Appeal Decision on 12 Feb 2007. Surely grounds for the proposal to be re-assessed.
For these three reasons we believe that the decision to approve this development should be reversed.
We have sent this to the head of planning at Basildon Council, and copies to our Councillors. What do YOU think? Does anyone out there have expert knowledge, who could help get this awful development removed once and for all?
Please let us know what you think - add comments below, or by emailing mail@wickfordactiongroup.org.uk
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And what about our Council's role in all this?
Those with long memories will recall that all of this was happening around the time of the Wickford Masterplan. In that plan, 490 flats were proposed, and the Runwell Road site was to have '35 one to five bedroom 'town houses'. The plan was published in November 2005, followed by a public consultation, and despite finding that '.. too much residential development was proposed, resistance to multi storey development...', the plan was approved by Basildon's Cabinet.
You may find this hard to believe, but having approved the published Masterplan, and the consultation completed, the Council then revised it, and the plan was re-published with 6 changes:
- One change was to more than double the number of flats in the 'Riverside Living' area in line with new planning applications from Runwell Councillor Ray Ride's Bradgate Developments (Lower Southend Road - now partially completed),
- and another changed the Runwell Road 35 houses to a 6 storey block of 84 flats! This on land also partly owned by Ray Ride. Strangely, this just coincided with the mysterious Butie Limited planning application which had been submitted on 6th Jan 2006.
- The new total for flats had increased from 490 to 598.
The Wickford Action Group saw correspondence from some of the participants in this farrago under the freedom of information act. We're not of course saying anything illegal happened but it was certainly malodourous.
Even today the mischief isn't over. The original planning application 06/00001/FULL has been removed from the Council's planning website! We accept that there has to be some tidying up of obsolete records, but this documentation, although 13 years old, represents the current permissive document for the works. Councillor Brockman is chasing this up and we will report in due course.
You can read more about the Runwell Towers fiasco on our Runwell Towers page
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