Planning Team, Uttlesford District Council, Council Offices, London Road, Saffron Walden, CB11 4ER 10th September 2013 Dear Sir or Madam,

Ref: Planning Application UTT/13/1769/OP - for 84 houses at Bury Water Lane and alterations to the width and alignment of Bury Water Lane, a new footway to the north of the Lane, alterations to the junction of the Lane with Whiteditch Lane and the provision of two passing places and a footway along School Lane (the “Sworders Development”)

I am writing to OPPOSE the Sworders development of this greenfield area because it is in breach of local and national planning policies for these reasons:

 This application would create unsustainable extra flows of traffic. The National Planning policy Framework (NPPF) requires that development be sustainable and the proposed development is not. Apart from the secondary school, the site is remote from all village facilities, particularly the primary school, and regular transport. There is no pavement planned to access Cambridge Road or direct into the village. The applicant claims that walking time to the station is 10 minutes (Planning Statement Appendix 1 p34 5.15). This is wrong. It is 20 minutes to the London platform by the most direct route (involving an unmade grass path, not ideal in winter and totally unsuitable for any disabled use) or 25 minutes using the proposed new footpath (up a steep hill along an exposed field edge). It is also 25 minutes to the primary school, at parent and child pace, and crosses 5 roads. Sworders representatives attended a Parish Council meeting at which residents and councillors expressed serious concern about these distances, and the consequent car commuting across the village. There is no extra employment in the village to support this development and its remoteness would mean that virtually all employment access would be by car. There is currently no provision for sustainable transport from the site, in breach of Local Plan and NPPF requirements.  The traffic documentation submitted for this application ignores the traffic potentially created by the care complex application for the same location. The combined effect of up to 440 more residents must be considered, and the applicant’s isolated traffic report not accepted. Newport Free Grammar School, have been offered by the applicants a ‘substantial six figure sum’ with no conditions attached. Nevertheless they have objected to the application on traffic, safety, and other grounds.  The two applications have competing road designs involving two new adjacent roads onto Bury Water Lane serving the same area. This duplication is not acceptable  Access to the site is restricted. It is on a dead end and access is via narrow lanes. The applicant proposes cutting in a passing place onto School Lane and that is all. The main flow of traffic would be through Newport Free Grammar School (NFGS), which with over 1000 students, itself creates significant traffic flows, along Bury Water Lane where residents have to park along the road. There is typically not a free two-way flow and at school time the buses operate a one-way system to cope with this. Delivery and other large vehicles going to the development would not be aware of this. On School Lane large vehicles have difficulty passing each other. It is not clear that emergency vehicles could get unimpeded access at school and commuting times.  The access road to the site floods. Wicken Water runs underneath the proposed site and is prone to flooding across the exit from the site. This blocks the route up towards the primary school and surgery, and also the NFGS one way arrangement. The applicant’s flood risk assessment is incomplete (awaiting Environment Agency data) but still assesses the flood hazard rating of the access road as ‘Danger to some’ and confirms that it is in a flood zone. No remedial action is proposed. The assessment says emergency vehicles could get through a flood. This may be just possible for a fire appliance, but not for ambulances, police cars or rapid response motorbikes. This would be the route off the M11 for emergency vehicles. Their assessment says a 40cm flood of the road is a once in a 1000 year probability, and 10 cm once in a hundred years. It is difficult to see how any reliability can be placed on such a report when we have had two ‘1000 year’ events just in 2012  The high visibility of the site in the landscape very clearly breaches UDC POLICY C2 and the requirement to protect the countryside included in LOCAL PLAN POLICY S7. Policy C2 says that development must maintain the 'panoramic views of the plateaux and uplands ... especially open views to historic

buildings and landmarks such as churches‘. The site is the field in the middle on the left picture, and Newport church, taken from the same place is on the right. A statement from UDC says that regardless of any screening work ‘The Council accept that the development would be visible in the landscape’ and the Campaign to Protect Rural England (CPRE) have objected, saying the development ‘is of great concern’. Sworders landscape submission is highly inaccurate in its portrayal of the site as already visually damaged by ‘incongruous elements’ and that the Harcamlow Way (Bury Water Lane) – picture right- as ‘degraded in this location’. They further add that the development would be screened by a very tall existing woodland along Wicken Water. These are commercial trees which a trustee for the owners, the Ellis Trust, confirmed at a Newport PC meeting are overdue for felling. Local Plan Policy S7 says ‘development in the countryside will only be permitted if its appearance protects or enhances the particular character of the part of the countryside within which it is set.’ This is also required by the NPPF which says we should ‘protect and enhance valued landscapes’ It is inconceivable that a housing estate here on an isolated open convex hillside would protect or enhance the countryside.  Sewerage infrastructure for this, and the care village proposal, has twice been reported by Anglian Water (AW) as inadequate and they have said that 'no more houses must be connected' (quoted in reports by Hyder Consulting UK Ltd commissioned by UDC, 2010 and 2012). The failures are in capacity at Newport sewage works, lack of discharge consent into the Cam and having a combined foul and rainwater system which can discharge sewage into the Cam. AW have confirmed that they do not intend to make any upgrades to solve these problems before development takes place and have been unable to convincingly explain why they have given approval for these and other connections. In correspondence with a Newport resident AW have twice sought to avoid discussion citing ‘confidentiality’ and have not answered a request to reveal the design capacity of the works, or to say how many times in 2012 it flooded sewage into the Cam. (It was seen doing so in January 2012 and an Environment Agency notification was made). It was built in the 1970’s and no significant upgrade work has been done to it. The Environment Agency says it cannot object to the connections as they have to accept the word of the sewerage company that capacity is available. Until there is full clarity from AW and an enforceable commitment to properly address these vital issues no development should be permitted  To link the two sites to the sewage works AW plan to cut a new sewer across the gardens of Bury Water Lane residents, NFGS, and across the main road. AW may have a right to put sewers wherever they wish, but this would be hugely unfair to the affected residents. Detailed plans of this are on an AW document published to support the adjacent care complex application. Following a challenge to AW they have very recently published a document saying that only a short length of sewer would need replacing, but their calculations only show the output from 84 houses, not the combined total. Their document also says the proposed sewer work would ‘ not provide betterment to the existing system’. The extra sewage from both sites would pass through the existing pump at the junction of Willow Vale and Bury Water Lane, the failure of which has flooded houses in the area. AW do not intend to upgrade this equipment (referred to in their document as the Wicken Bonhunt pumping station)  The proposal would damage historic hedge boundaries by creating a new boundary in the middle of a field and subsuming an existing one into the development. There is a planning presumption that existing boundaries should be maintained, in order to protect the ancient landscape structure. Also this artificial subdivision of a field leaves it open to further development over the rest of it - possibly over 100 homes  The land in this proposal is grade 2 agricultural land (the best quality in Uttlesford). It is a foraging area for bats, owls, badgers, newts and toads. There is another large site in Newport, put forward by its owners, which, except for sewerage, has none of the above deficiencies. This is the quarry, which was supported by residents in the January 2012 consultation. The NPPF encourages ‘the effective use of land by reusing land that has been previously developed’ The large and available quarry site must be given priority over this greenfield development.  In the July 2012 UDC Plan consultation this site was criticised by professionals and statutory bodies. These include Amsted Properties, Countryside Properties UK Ltd, the Campaign to Protect Rural England (CPRE), Essex County Council, Gleeson Homes, Needham Group Limited (owners of Chalk Farm Quarry) and Wilbraham Associates Ltd (Chartered Town Planners). Their many criticisms included poor sewerage and road infrastructure, too distant from station, would 'destroy the landscape setting of this part of the settlement' and that the location is 'contrived'. 90% of respondents to the consultation rejected this site (5% did not answer the Yes/No question, and 5% said Yes, being mainly the owners and agents for the site)  Newport Parish Council strongly object to this application. They object on fourteen grounds. Those additional to the issues raised above include being outside the village development limits, the adverse impact on the Conservation Area, and lack of consultation with the doctors surgery. They also draw attention to inaccuracies in the application including seriously underestimating walking times and stating that a village consultation had been held when all that was done was Sworders representatives attending a Parish Council meeting.

Yours faithfully

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