Sunday 26 October 2014

Action Right Now! Letters to our District Councillors


Here are the names of your District Councillors:  Marian Andrews,  Stephen Burroughes , Tony Cooper, Tony Fryatt,  Michael Gower,  Trevor Hawkins
Christopher Hudson,  Debbie McCallum, Bob Snell  

Write to them:  

c/o Suffolk Coastal District Council, Melton Hill, Melton IP12 1AU
It is important that you write in your own words and one letter to each councillor. Petitions don’t count, apparently.
Please quote the Fairfield Road development planning application number: 
DC/14/2747/FUL FRA

You will see below an example of a letter - you might want to pull a few points out of it for your own letter- writing:




Councillor  …….
Suffolk Coastal District Council
Melton Hill
Melton
Woodbridge
IP12 1AU



Dear Councillor……………..
References:  Planning Applications DC/14/2747/FUL (Fairfield Road); DC/14/2276/FUL (Mount Pleasant); DC/14/2573/FUL (New Road); DC/13/3234/OUT(Saxtead Road)
I am writing to you as you are a member of the Northern Area Development Management Committee and I am hoping that you will be able to take a wider view of the proposed adverse developments in Framlingham in a joined-up fashion.
The combined scale of the proposed developments in Framlingham fails to meet many of the district-wide policies of the core plan or the Framlingham specific policies. Specific examples include:
  • SP1; sustainability - Housing should be close to employment services.  There are no new employment areas planned in Framlingham, so the increased population will have to commute elsewhere.  The New Road proposal is actually reducing the employment opportunities.
  • SP1; sustainability, SP23; maintaining historic character - The increase in population and necessary commuting will put a huge demand on the road network that is already strained.  The traffic flows modelled in the applications simply do not reflect the current  situation.  Traffic is already choking Framlingham and destroying the historic character, further development is therefore in direct conflict with Strategic Policy SP23.
  • SP1; sustainability - The education facilities, including nursery, primary and secondary schools, cannot accommodate the increase in demand if these developments go ahead.
  • There is only a single GP surgery serving Framlingham and this is already at capacity.  The next closest location, at Earl Soham is run by the same practice so provides no additional capacity.
  • SP18; infrastructure provision, the infrastructure required in order to service and deliver new development must be in place or provided at the required phase of the development.  None of the proposals include provisions to meet the infrastructure shortfalls. 
  • SP23 (a); maintaining historic character The requirement to maintain its high quality historic character this will be ruined by increased traffic and parking on already strained road system
  • SP23 (b); The requirement for sufficient services (health, education, community (including sports) as noted above, education and health services are at capacity.  The community facilities are privately funded whereas other towns in the area already have council-provided facilities
  • SP23 (c); land allocation - Re-development of brownfield land should create new mixed use areas to meet the local needs Development should occur on the brownfield Station Road site before any greenfield sites 
  • SP23 (g);  Requirement for improved access to the town centre through improvements to the town centre car parks, linked to improved local public transport Developers claim their proposal will not have a detrimental impact and rely on toothless travel policies that clearly will have very limited impact given the current level of public transport. 
  • DM21; relation to existing settlement - It is clear from the housing styles and segregation of the affordable element that these proposals have been written by people who do not understand the fragile nature of Framlingham, and they have simply been designed to maximise the commercial profit from agricultural land outside the town.  
If these edge of town developments are permitted to go ahead without due consideration of the infrastructure needed to maintain the unique character of Framlingham, it will set a dangerous precedent and will open the doors to further developments as envisaged by the landowners who have already submitted huge areas of green field land into the SHLAA process.