Jonathan P Leech
Henham
e-mail:
Cllr Ketteridge
Uttlesford District Council
Council Offices
London Road
Saffron Walden
Essex CB11 4ER
03 August 2012
Dear Mr. Ketteridge,
I attended the council meeting last Tuesday and was dismayed by the total lack of direction the council seems to have over the Governments demands for more housing in the Uttlesford District area.
As I sat and listened I came up with an analogy which I believe you should heed.
You are confronted with a long journey that you have to make, and you are presented with 10 means of transportation; you have to decide which vehicle to take.
Firstly you make a quick assessment of what is needed from the 10 possible vehicles. Quickly you decide taking luggage and 6 people the motorbike is out of the question. Next you look at the truck as this will carry the luggage and people, but decide it is not very suitable for the passengers and has poor economy.
So within the first round 2 vehicles are eliminated straight away and no further time or effort is wasted. Now you take a closer look at other aspects of the problem, fuel, seating, comfort, speed etc. and within a short time decide on a very few vehicles to devote your decision making efforts. Finally you can choose the best vehicle for the job. By adopting this process of elimination, most effort is spent on the best options with little time wasted on the early rejects.
Now fit this into the dilemma the council is faced over housing. As time is valuable and expensive it seems senseless to explore Every Last Avenue of the proposal of Elsenham and Henham when everything is stacked against it. Continuing to thrash out every last aspect of the possibilities of this proposal is taking valuable recourses away from the next and better option on the list, when metaphorically the Elsenham engine is already dead. By now, some considerable time on from when the problem was set, at least 5 of the options should have been dumped, so the remaining time could be spent getting the best results from the planning resources. If the Planners are so professional at their job, what are they doing, a year on with nothing to show, having spent countless £ thousands of tax payers money.
To summarize, it makes no difference if you build 3,000 houses in Elsenham or more, because 3,000 is already too many for the area to cope with, besides, you know that once the floodgate is open there will be nothing to stop 5,000 then 10,000 plus houses being forced upon you by the Government, then who picks up the bill for the ever increasing disaster, yes, you got it, Uttlesford District Council and the local tax payer because the Government ‘that is already broke’ is not likely to jump in and sort out the financial and ecological abortion.
Yours sincerely
Jonathan P Leech