The Plan proposes to distribute the 478,000 homes around the Region as follows:
Annual Average Total
Bedfordshire and Luton 535 10,700
Cambridgeshire and Peterborough 4465 89,300
Essex, Southend, and Thurrock 6170 123,000
Hertfordshire 3980 79,600
Norfolk 3630 72,600
In addition 43,000 are earmarked for the Milton Keynes area. Essex, as may be seen is much the biggest recipient of housing
development and much of this is concentrated around the so-called London Arc, which suggests that much of the population
destined to occupy these houses will derive via London. Many of these will continue to work in London and add to the heavy
commuting burden that our area, including the Forest, already bears. For instance, a proportion of the housing will be
'affordable' and destined for 'key workers' who cannot afford to buy in London and who consequently will join the commuters!
In fact the Plan rather desperately declares that it will "seek to ensure that job opportunities are
present prior to housing provision."
It is easy to write this in a document rather less easy, to deliver. Harlow was planned so that, people who lived there would
also work there and walk or cycle to their jobs. It hasn't worked out like that!
In fact the Plan (in 2.14) declares "It is not easy to predict the exact sources of future inward migration to the Region (to
occupy all the houses!) but if present trends continue the major gross flows into the Region will come from London
(approx. 40% of all in-migrants)and from overseas (20%)"
Nearly 5½ million people live in the Region. Given the proposed approx. l/2m homes and the virtually inevitable further
development after the Plan period, it is entirely possible that the Region's population could double in 30 years time. This
would lead to further massive environmental and quality of life deterioration that our children and grandchildren and others
will have to bear, assuming that they don't all emigrate to escape.
The separate S.E.A. (Environment Report) Chapter 4 states that "The baseline shows that a number of aspects of the environment
area are already seriously stressed by human impacts. Further development on any significant scale is likely to have serious
negative impacts on water resources, biodiversity, tranquillity, air quality, recreational access and congestion. The larger
the volume of development the harder it will be to avoid increased flood risk, erosion of the quality and distinctiveness of
settlements, the built environment and landscape".
The Report goes on to say that "it suspects that the level of growth proposed for the Region could be accommodated with much
less environmental damage in many other parts of the U.K. However studying this was beyond the remit of the Report and no
evaluation seems to have been carried out by the Government."
