Council Roles
- Planning Committee
- Leisure Project Board
- Mi Community Working Group
- Highways Liaison Task and Finish Group (Chair)
- Green Group Leader
- Cabinet by invitation (non-voting)
Involvement with Organisations in Braintree District
and Elsewhere
- Chairman of Rivenhall Parish
Council
- BDC representative (with Cllr. Bob Wright) to the Rivenhall
Playing Fields Association
- Supporting role to Greener Silver End
- Member of Witham and Countryside Society
- Member of North Essex Astronomical Society
- Member of CPREssex
- Supporter of Stop Stansted Expansion
- Member of Greenpeace
- Member of the British Astronomical Association and its CfDS
group
- UCL Alumni supporter
- Chair of Witham and Braintree Green Party and Co-ordinator of
Essex Green Party
www.witham-braintree.greenparty.org.uk
- Eastern Region Green Party spokesperson on energy, transport
and climate change www.eastern.greenparty.org.uk
- Green Party of England and Wales national spokesperson on Science
and Technology www.greenparty.org.uk
Civic Year 2011/12 and report to residents in
Bradwell, Silver End and Rivenhall
At the elections in May 2011, Cllr. Bob Wright and I were
elected to represent Bradwell, Silver End and Rivenhall
ward. We would like to thank former district councillor Phil
Hughes for the 12 years he spent representing the ward from 1999 to
2011.
The most dominant issues recently have been local ones,
especially the future of community halls.
We worked with the local community to ensure a positive future for
Silver End village hall, and helped secure funding for a much
needed replacement heating system. Discussions are onging on
further improvements. A key issue for us is that the hall must be
available for local people and groups at affordable rates.
The state of the roads and pavements and road safety
issues are often raised by residents. We have
expressed concerns about the effectiveness of the current
arrangements with Essex County Council (the main highways authority
for the area) and welcomed the confirmation that a Task and
Finish Group would be set up to look into these matters.
Locally, we continue to support safety
improvements, specifically the need to improve the
A12 junctions at Rivenhall End and also
to remove HGV through traffic from Oak Road. We welcomed
the start on the A12 safety barrier for residents and to
protect the cycleway/footway between Witham and Kelvedon. The
Highways Agency (HA) agreed to this after requests and we wish
to now see the work completed all the way to Witham. The
cycleway/footway also need better regular maintainance and we are
liaising with BDC and the HA on this.
The A120 remains a difficult issue with
no clear solution in sight. We remain supportive of measures to get
through traffic out of Bradwell and separated from local
traffic at the Galleys Corner roundabout and at the Coggeshall
junction . Safety should be the top priority. We do not
support a new major off-line road through the countryside. We have
continued to discuss options for early local improvements
with residents and parish councils, including supporting
residents in Bradwell on their concerns regarding the new crossing
and associated streetlighting and the ideas for traffic calming and
environmental improvements through the village. We also support the
A120 "Save Lives Not Time" campaign.
The pavements through Bradwell remain in a poor state in places,
despite several approaches to the Highways Agency, who are the
responsible authority. We will continue to remind them of their
responsibility to make sure that all the paths are safe to use. The
HA are pledging to repair the disintegrating path between the
car sales garage and the eastern edge of the village in 2012/13, or
possibly late this financial year.
Safety on the roads and paths is often raised by residents and
at local meetings. We have worked with the parish councils on these
issues and others and a number of schemes are being proposed for
the future, such as gateway signs for Silver End, which the parish
council is proposing. Rivenhall got its first Vehicle
Activated speed warning sign (VAS) in 2008, near the church and a
second one in Henry Dixon Road is now in place full time. In
Rickstones Road a VAS is put up on a shared rotation basis with
other villages. The zebra crossing in Rivenhall was completed
in the summer of 2007. This improves pedestrian access across the
busy and fast Church Road and originally was the subject of a
petition from parents of children at Rivenhall School.
Unfortunately Essex County Council (ECC) have not acted to
replace the School Crossing Patrol person for the Western
Road crossing in Silver End despite requests from
residents, councillors and school to do so. We are continuing to
lobby ECC for a replacement to be recruited as soon as
possible. We will continue to support stronger measures to
slow traffic down through all the villages in ward, including
lowering the default 60mph limit between the villages and extending
the 30mph zones.
We have continued to support improvements to public
transport and facilities for pedestrians and cyclists.
We suggested a new footpath north of Rivenhall towards Silver
End, which found favour with the parish council and was
being processed by the County Council, but due to a change in
criteria appears to have been put back several years. We have
continued to report blockages of a number of footpaths in the ward
and lack of directional signs in some places. We worked with
ECC to secure refurbishment of the historic cast metal road sign in
the centre of Silver End which is now complete.
We continue to reportfly tips on
footpaths and littering of verges and it has been good to see
that generally the BDC Clean Team has been very helpful in clearing
these quickly or finding ways to get areas cleared even when they
don’t necessarily have a duty to do so.
We continue to support improvements to the Braintree Branch line
and Witham station, but note the passing loop project is long
overdue. We support the provision of an integrated public transport
and cycleway/walking network linked to the stations as a means of
giving people sustainable transport choices
and also to help reduce traffic congestion and air pollution.
Parking remains a major issue,
particularly in Silver End. Along with the former Silver End
South Tenants and Residents Association (SESTRA) we helped organise
a meeting in the summer of 2007 to try and sort out the parking
problems and ongoing damage to grass verges in School Road and
Valentine Way. Progress has been slow since but we secured £5000
from the former Witham Local Committee for a residents survey. This
was carried out by the Rural Community Council of Essex (RCCE) and
identified that parking bays are the most popular solution. A
multi-agency site meeting resulted in Essex County Council agreeing
to bays in Valentine Way if someone else paid for them but refusing
to allow such bays in School Road. So the two roads are now been
taken forward as separate projects. In 2011 we secured funding from
Silver End Parish Council and BDC for full plans and costings to be
drawn up for the bays in Valentine Way. These plans and
costing will be needed to apply for capital funding. School
Road is being taken forward with Greenfields and a meeting with
residents took place in November 2011.
We have supported the provision of a number of disabled badge
parking bays in the ward and will continue to do so
With reducing financial resources available to local
authorities, trying to ensure that standards are maintained and
projects continued is difficult, but a way of achieving this is to
look to very local solutions, working with the parish councils
and other organisations, seeking grant funding and match
funding.
We continue to press for
ambitiousrecycling and composting targets
(at least 70% by 2020), improvements to the collection systems
and that waste should not be incinerated. Recycling and
composting continues to improve with the strong support of
most residents. An additional welcome feature has been a decline in
the total amount of waste collected, which has occurred over
several years across Essex as a whole. We have continued to support
residents, shops, local groups and schools in the development
of the BDC and other recycling systems through assisting with
information, recycling bags, getting in touch with BDC officers,
etc. The introduction of separated food waste collections by
BDC is welcomed, a move which should push recycling levels to
around 60% in the district.
We oppose the Essex Waste Strategy and Essex Waste PFI bid
which aim to create 1 or 2 very large centralised waste sites in
Essex and the incineration of around 40% to 50% of all household
waste in the county. This includes the possibility that
Rivenhall Airfield, in open countryside, will be one
such site. A second planning application was submitted in 2008
for a regional waste site and incinerator which attracted
overwhelming public opposition (over 900 opposing letters to 1
supporting). Although Essex County Council tried to grant consent,
they were prevented from doing so by the Government and the
application became the subject of a Public Planning Inquiry, an
outcome we worked for with local residents and organisations to
achieve. The Inspector to the Inquiry did grant planning consent in
March 2010 but with over 60 planning conditions and legal
obligations.
We support a district based solution for waste,
concentrating on high levels of recycling, composting and the use
of green technology such as anaerobic digestion (AD). Vacant
existing allocated industrial land, such as on the Witham
industrial estates, could be used for sustainable district scale
recycling and would create more sustainable local jobs. There are
already a number of successful local firms working in this
sector and an application for an AD plant has been granted in
Halstead.
We continue to receive many approaches from residents about
planning issues. We have worked with BDC to
help ensure that planning enforcement is strengthened and
that enforcement issues are better reported to
councillors and the public.
We have continued to press for ambitious and sustainable
design practices to be required in developments and it has been
very encouraging to see that Members of the Planning Committee
generally share a desire to see green design incorporated into
developments as a matter of course. Green design delivers
development that is more energy and resource efficient - a saving
for both the occupiers and the planet in terms of curbing carbon
emissions. Progress is however threatened by the proposed cut
in the Feed-in-Tariff (FiT) which supports solar photovoltaic (PV)
investment. BDC is currently reviewing its proposals for potential
solar PV installations on 39 buildings it owns. The large wind
turbine planned for Great Notley is also being reviewed. As well as
these schemes, the big cuts to FiTs will result in job losses.
There are several companies in Braintree District and nearby
working in this field.
We have continued to press for reduced light pollution,
which is closely linked to wasteful energy use. Unfortunately BDC
and ECC have not agreed to the full set of proposals we put
forward, including policies to ensure that switching and
sensor technology to save energy is used on all buildings and sites
under the control and influence of the 2
authorities, such as empty car parks late at night. We will
continue to press for such energy saving schemes - which
increasingly will save public money as energy prices continue
to rise. We support the Essex County Council trials for
switching off some streetlights at midnight (1am BST) subject to
consultation and safety issues.
The replacement of the Braintree District Local Plan with the
Local Development Framework (LDF) has been a challenging
process for our ward, particularly for Rivenhall. A 6 hectare
industrial allocation on farmland north east of Witham, but in
Rivenhall, appears to have been finally removed
after concern expressed by residents, the parish council and
the former BDC Witham Local Committee. But the 300 (minimum)
houses planned for land north east of Forest Road, Witham, but in
Rivenhall looks set to go ahead and is now in the Adopted Core
Strategy despite overwhelming rejection by local
residents in the LDF consultation, as well as the Parish Council,
the Witham Local Committee and even from a vote of the LDF Panel
itself. If this development does go ahead it will roughly
double the population of Rivenhall Parish, consume a large area of
highly attractive countryside, change forever the setting of the
Protected Rectory Lane and increase road traffic and
congestion.
We support other aspects of the LDF, particularly the emphasis
on affordable housing and are currently working with local parish
councils on the next stage of the LDF, which is the Allocations
Document.
We have continued to support a number of local organisations
that work with young people in the villages
and projects that will provide more facilities for young
people. The ward is very well supported by a number of
successful groups working with children and young adults in
sport, activities, etc. The Children's Centre at Silver
End Village Hall is a vital link for families and young people and
it is important that it continues.
The ward is home to many elderly people
who have their own needs. There are reasonable bus services in the
ward, but these must not be reduced any more, as they have been in
the past. We support the work of the police, the Village Agents and
others in the work they do to support elderly people. An issue that
particularly affects elderly people is the icy state of paths
when freezing weather periods occur. Over several years we lobbied
Essex County Council about the lack of a proper plan of path
gritting and over the legal issues that appeared to hinder
local gritting arrangements. This year a Salt Bag scheme has been
introduced which we fully support as a way of getting better
local path clearing actioned by the parishes and volunteers
working with them.
The new Rickstones Academy is due to open early in 2012. We
have liaised with the academy about the development plans and other
issues. The academy is primarily a school for Witham, but it is
physically in Rivenhall parish and children from the villages
attend. The ward also has 2 primary
schools, in Rivenhall and Silver End. We
have liaised with both schools on highway safety issues,
particularly on the Western Road patrol crossing and parking
issues. We strongly support improvements to safety outside the
Rivenhall school which being near the edge of the village is close
to the 60mph limit area and so vehicle speeds are often too high
and visibility can be poor due to parking on the bend in
the road. An agreed improvement scheme is with Essex County Council
and we are urging early implementation.
The Housing Transfer took place in 07/08. We
supported housing remaining with BDC. Nevertheless, we
want Greenfields to be a success and the promises made to
tenants and leaseholders to be met. We have dealt with a few
housing issues over the past year - but there does not appear to be
any major problems that we have been made aware of. We attend
estate walks with Greenfields when we can.
The review oflocal Post Offices
thankfully spared both Rivenhall and Silver End from the closure
programme, but Rivenhall temporarily shut due to other reasons. We
shared the delight of the local community on its re-opening under
new management in 2011.
The completion of the community hospital in Braintree
is welcome and we continue to support the provision of a
non-acute treatment clinic for Witham.
Recent years has seen a much improved dialogue with the
Police. The community policing
arrangements are generally working well and there has been a
noticeable improvement in patrols and reporting back. Anti-social
behaviour and vandalism, particularly in Silver End, does remain a
problem which we believe can be tackled, and especially though more
patrols in the evenings and the development of services via the
Children's Centre. Speeding remains an issue along the Cressing -
Silver End - Rivenhall road, which the police are aware of.
Community Speed watch schemes are underway in the villages,
which we support, but these need more volunteers.
Cllr. James Abbott's allowances and expenses from BDC in
the year to April 2011 totalled £6709. He has tried to walk
and cycle to as many meetings as possible, more particularly parish
and other local meetings in the ward.