IN March, Tendring Council signed up to the Essex County strategy for future sustainable development.

This was based on three critical conditions: avoidance of over-development, avoidance of rapid development ahead of jobs and public services essential to an enlarged community, and provision of transportation and road links to attract new businesses and provide access to markets, work, education and healthcare.

This was to apply to the Tendring district as a whole for the benefit of everyone and councillors were fully aware of these commitments when they signed.

What we now have is the proposition of a grossly distorted strategy, which ignores the overriding needs of our rural community. The council appears fixated with the large scale unsustainable dumping of more than 6,000 homes around Clacton (an 18,000 or so increase in population) in a town already experiencing reducing public resources, overstretched infrastructure and high unemployment.

The mere construction of thousands of new properties will not in itself lead to substantive permanent job creation.

Some 87 per cent of the need for housing is outside Clacton in the west, mid-Tendring and Harwich districts. However, there is nothing stated about developing housing and employment opportunities for these rural areas, which would assist small shops, post offices, pubs and other small businesses to survive difficult economic circumstances.

While I am not able to comment on the merits or otherwise of the proposed Ardleigh Farm development, it appears that it offers a model for positive development for rural townships and villages across Tendring.

Furthermore, such development along a Colchester, mid-Tendring to Harwich corridor would add weight to improvement of the A120 and the A133 and eventually a link providing easier access between the coastal strip to the south and Harwich. This would provide a definite attraction for inward investment via new businesses.

What is needed, therefore, is a joint entrepreneur and local authority partnership development, integrated with housing on an appropriate scale, whereby jobs are created in the local rural community to avoid the handicap of difficult or non-existent public transport. I strongly suggest that the Ardleigh model could play a major part in Tendring’s future development so that new homes and businesses are developed in parallel for the benefit of Tendring as a whole.

Gordon Adams
Smythe Road
Clacton