WE read with utter amazement on the front page of last week’s Gazette that a consortium of landowners and developers plan to build more than 2,000 houses on what they are naming the Hartley Park site.

This unwanted development will stretch from the junction of Jaywick Lane, west of Clacton, to Brook Retail Park. They say that proposals will include a new school, a medical centre, sports facilities and room to build shops and business premises.

It is not in their or Tendring Council’s, remit to promise this. It’s the NHS and Essex County Council who say where surgeries and schools will or will not be built.

Shops and businesses are mentioned by the developer. Tell these people about all the shops closing in our town centre.

The idea of encouraging families to a district with the second highest unemployment rate in Essex, which is short of GP surgeries, hospitals, schools and other infrastructure, is a gamble at the expense of future residents, and definitely not in the best interest of those of us who are already finding public facilities in short supply.

If we’re serious about regeneration, new housing developments should be sited nearer sources of employment. Along the A120 would be an obvious choice.

Clacton and Holland-on-Sea already have brownfield sites that would more than accommodate any modest new developments.

On display at the consultations, you will note that the site in Sladbury’s Lane, originally planned to build 700 houses, has now been extended around to Thorpe Road and could accommodate 2,600 properties.

Please come to the last consultation at Holland public hall, tomorrow, noon to 4pm. Make you views known to Tendring Council planning officers and councillors who may be there. It will be your last chance. Make your voice heard.

Cllr Joy Broderick
Cllr Mary Bragg
Cllr KT King
Holland Residents’ Association and the Sladbury’s Lane Protest Group