I WAS struck by the report about the Rapid Transit Scheme for North Essex Garden Communities.

I understood this scheme to be a critical part of the evidence required by the Planning Inspector prior to the Local Plan examination restarting.

The authorities have stated they intend to submit all their new evidence later this year.

This raises several immediate questions: Is this report actually the evidence or is it something else, maybe a feasibilty study, because it seems to contain various “options” and no real evidence of deliverability or proper costing.

One of the contacts in the report is Richard Bayley, managing director of North Essex Garden Communities,

When I’ve met him before, I’ve always been impressed by his confidence in delivering the new town schemes (they are endearingly known by the people behind them as garden communities).

I’ve also been surprised by his apparent lack of experience at delivering anything of similar magnitude and complexity and more importantly by his lack of local knowledge.

This problem seems to be wisdespread among those employed at public expense to write reports such as this one on the Rapid Transport Scheme.

While the report deserves a lot more detailed analysis in time, after an initial review, I can’t help thinking this is all complete nonsense; uncosted and from a practical point of view, undeliverable.

I took a few local photographs of the countryside where they propose one of the options for Route 2 (a new route running from Heckford Bridge through Mulberry Green to the A12).

These views are over agricultural land which is not within the area earmarked for development in the Local Plan:

The report says that cost of land acquisition is not included in their figures: so how do they propose to acquire this land and at what cost? Is it by negotiation or compulsory purchase, and will they get the necessary planning permission?

And that is before we start looking at how they fit up to fit five lanes of shared use or so-called priority carriageway along Lexden and London Roads to the west of Colchester (or perhaps the artist’s impressions in the report aren’t meant to be taken seriously either, just like the previous scheme that showed the A12 being realigned through Copford).

More questions to come in due course, Mr Bayley, I hope you can answer them before the public examination restarts.

Neil Gilbranch

Copford