Rayleigh and Wickford MP, Mark Francois, has expressed his disappointment at the recent decision by Rochford District Council’s Development Control Committee to pass the revised planning application to build some 500 houses on the land North of London Road in West Rayleigh.
The original planning application was debated in January at some length in an often highly charged meeting of the committee and Mark attended in his role as the local MP and also gave evidence against the application – chiefly on the grounds that he believed it did not provide sufficient guarantees of infrastructure.
Unfortunately, Mark was not able to attend the meeting held on 30th September however, his objections to the original and revised application were on record. The passing of the revised outline application now gives the developers, Countryside Properties, permission in principle to build on the site although final details of the application will still have to be decided when a further detailed planning application is submitted, probably sometime later this year or early in 2016. This should hopefully give a second opportunity to ensure that infrastructure is more adequately guaranteed at that stage.
Following the recent approval of this application, Mark Francois said:
“I am disappointed at the Council’s decision to allow this planning application through as I still believe that the infrastructure guarantees provided by the developer were insufficient. However, there will now have to be another ‘detailed application’ later this year or early next year and I hope that by that stage the developers will have firmed up their offers of additional infrastructure provision and that the councillors will hold them to account to make sure that no new houses are actually constructed on the site unless and until the required infrastructure is provided.”