A PROPOSED ‘Garden Village’-type development including up to 600 homes on the former North Weald Golf Club site “doesn’t make sense” and is being opposed by North Weald Bassett Parish Council.

Various issues were highlighted when the parish council’s planning committee considered the outline proposals for the site which is not in the approved Epping Forest District Council Local Plan as a suitable site for housing.

Parish council planning officer Adriana Jones told Monday’s meeting the ‘North Weald Park’ application includes up to 600 homes (with 52 per cent ‘affordable’ housing) with the “primary” access off Rayley Lane.

The homes would be a mix of one and two-bedroom flats and two, three and four-bedroom houses.

A country park is also proposed along with a care home – with up to 70 beds – retail / commercial space, upgraded facilities for Shooters, a play area, allotments and orchard, with the development funding “significant investment in public infrastructure, including potential for a new bus service”.

Councillor Andy Tyler said: “This doesn’t make sense.”

He raised concerns over the impact the additional residents would have on local healthcare services, the proposed Rayley Lane access, and highlighted the references made in a report submitted with the planning application to contamination by arsenic, lead and mercury on parts of the site.

He said: “How are these people (the residents of the proposed development) going to have access to healthcare in an emergency?

“I would like Alex Burghart (local MP) to actively call for a public inquiry on this (if planning permission is granted). It is one of the fundamentals that people have access to healthcare in all its forms.”

Commenting on the contaminants, councillor Tyler said: “That is going to get into the water table, and that’s a serious problem.”

Councillor Terry Blanks said he believed North Weald’s drainage system would not be able to cope, and neither would the local roads with the additional housing numbers already detailed in various other planning applications in the parish.

Councillor Sheila Jackman said: “It (the site) isn’t in the Local Plan anyway. It’s a basic thing. We’ve already got enough (new housing) in North Weald.

“There are other areas around here that haven’t got the same sort of density (in proposed new housing schemes) that we have.”