Author: ferocag

There is a meeting to discuss the new Logistics Park at Kirton this afternoon (21 Nov – starting 13.00) at Felixstowe Ferry Golf Club. The agents (Bidwells) are presenting the proposals to various local bodies (Parish Councils etc.). The general public are not invited. If you wish to air your concerns, then please come down to the Golf Club. We can only stand outside for a while but it will not hurt to let them know that local residents also have a right to know what is going on.

Interesting article from the CPRE (click link below) – this very much applies to our area. While developers have the option of building on green-field sites, they will not choose to use the brownfield sites (because it is more expensive to do so). We need to apply pressure to our Councillors to change their planning policies.

Campaign for The Protection of Rural England article

Work has now started on the Ferry Road site. Currently it is mostly still archaeology but they have also started work on the road widening etc. As you can see from the photos most of the topsoil has now been scraped up by the bulldozers. We have temporary traffic lights on Ferry Road. This and the building work is already causing disruption for local residents.

When the council approved this application, they specified that the approval was dependent upon the developer meeting a number of conditions. Some of these conditions need to met before any development work starts. We have recently been asking the planners to provide us with an update on what progress is being made by the developer towards meeting these conditions.

For example the Suffolk County Council archaeological service has identified that this site has a “high potential” to be of “strong archaeological” interest and a planning condition was established such that the developer must submit, gain approval, and execute a detailed archaeological survey programme before development work starts. We know that this has not yet been done, but the planners are refusing to give us any information about this.

There a number of other, similar conditions relating to wildlife etc. surveys. Again, the planner officers  are not providing any information about whether these conditions are being met. Why?

Our local town Councillors (especially Doreen Savage & Mike Deacon) have been very helpful with this, but the un-elected planning officials in Melton  seem to want to ignore the questions of both local residents and local Councillors.