As local residents will have seen from Icene, the Ickleton Society is extremely concerned about the Uttlesford Local Plan Options and Issues Consultation.  It includes various potential areas for a new settlement and for town and village extensions including 2 new settlement areas near Great Chesterford. One is to the north east of Great Chesterford and the other is on the Essex side of Coploe Hill which, frankly, is unbelievable. A new settlement could ultimately amount to some 3000 to 6000 or even 10,000 houses. The consultation document and the sustainability assessments can be found here (http://www.uttlesford.gov.uk/lpconsult) and the latter contains maps which, at this stage are broad ‘areas of search’. The first one stretches from the A11 to Chesterford Park including Park Road, Cow Lane and a section of the Icknield Way. The Coploe Hill site would be within an area which includes parts of Valance Farm, Argers, Howe Wood (the bluebell wood), Strethall wood, a stretch of the Icknield Way and goes up to the strip lynchetts (baulks). The sustainability assessments are very high level but, in our view, significantly underplay the downsides of these sites.

The Ickleton Society strongly opposes development of either of these sites not least because of the amount of additional traffic that could be expected to rat run through the village. We have responded to the consultation setting out our views in detail and you can see a copy here. We urge you to respond to the consultation as well. As you’ll have seen from letters in the local newspapers, there seem to be quite a number of Uttlesford residents who think that a settlement as close to the Cambridgeshire border as possible is the best solution for them. The more responses that are submitted setting out why this should not happen, the better. You are welcome to use any part of our response you wish (though it is always better to put it into your own words if you’ve time).