READERS may recall the Local Development Plans of Harlow DC, Epping Forest DC and East Herts DC have in part created the Harlow and Gilston Garden Town, which as things stand will see thousands of homes built on the Green Belt around Harlow.

The Harlow Alliance Party has long campaigned to see these proposals rejected on the grounds that these Councils have taken steps to ensure that residents in Harlow were not properly consulted and that the towns boundary should have been changed at the outset so that the future of the Green Belt was decided by Councillors in the Civic Office in Harlow and not in Epping and Hertford.

When consulting residents in Harlow, Harlow DC received just 126 responses at one of the stages and did not carry out any specific consultation with residents living around the sites they proposed to allow homes to be built on.

Contrast this with news from Councils in Hertfordshire, where Local Development Plans have been thrown out following consultation with residents. Just this week, Hertsmere DC have announced that the Plan to build 12,160 homes, of which 9,000 were to go on Green Belt land, has been rejected after 18,000 residents objected to it. This followed the rejection of Plans produced by Dacorum BC, St Albans DC and Welwyn and Hatfield BC which would have seen thousands of homes built across a whole swathe of Hertfordshire.

These Councils have had to listen to residents and begun to object to the Governments imposed new housing numbers, which are based on many assumptions and information which is clearly out of date.

The final observations by the Planning Inspector of the Local Development Plan of Epping Forest DC will become known in the very near future. Many residents across Harlow and Epping will be hoping that Councillors in the Civic Offices at Epping seized the opportunity taken by neighbouring authorities to reject the Plan.

Nicholas Taylor

The Harlow Alliance Party