Eco-town: make your views heard now!

Written by Cllr Alan Dean, 6th. June 2008 on Sun 22nd Jun 2008

The proposal for a new town between Elsenham and Henham is bad news for Uttlesford and East Hertfordshire districts. We all tend to think that any development more than two miles from home is out of sight and out of mind; thankfully not in my backyard. How wrong we would be.

Every resident who cares for the future of this area should write by 30 June 2008 to The Eco Towns Team, Housing and Growth Programmes, Department of Communities and Local Government, 2/H9 Eland House, Bressenden Place, London. SW1 5DU or email ecotowns@communities.gsi.gov.uk with their objections.

An eco-town at Elsenham, or even a district council inspired non-eco-town on the same fields, will likely lead to an inundation of new settlements from Great Chesterford to The Canfields, Little Easton, Little Dunmow and Stebbing on the back of an opening up of rural Uttlesford to unfettered housing growth. Places like Bishop's Stortford will also be overwhelmed by the impact.

Your readers should not forget that we are not only dealing with the destruction of the villages of Elsenham and Henham. We are fighting for the very survival of this whole area from becoming another M4 Slough-like conurbation. The other so-called eco-town proposal at Hinxton, now cutely renamed Hanley Grange, would add to the blight and congestion.

Please, readers, object to both North East Elsenham and Hanley Grange (both of which would soon grow to rival Saffron Walden in size), not just the one nearer to you. Tell the government that new towns should be on brownfield sites and not on needed agricultural land; be where the local infrastructure can cope; be where they don't overwhelm existing successful communities; and should be chosen through local democracy and not by central government imposition.

We are dealing with a domino effect that will engulf all of us, our children, our grandchildren and the countryside around us unless we speak out now.

Cllr Alan Dean