» The proposed development will cover an area of 5.51 hectares (13.615 acres).
» The proposed development will number 351 dwellings, plus 46 key worker flats. A total of 397 dwellings.
» Bellway Homes (the developer) has set aside no money to invest in extra transportation to cope with the extra residents.
» Bellway Homes in their planning application call Coopersale "a small development". Coopersale is a old village and shows how little interest Bellway has in the local area!
» Bellway Homes state in their planning application that Epping London Underground station is located in Epping High Street. This is a blatant lie; the station is located in Station Road which is approximately 1.4 miles from the proposed development.***
» St. Margaret's Hospital could become difficult to access with the increased traffic, as the site is next door to the hospital. Also, the Hospital's parking could quite easily be used by the residents of the new development, as the parking is freely accessible, which would bring problems in using the Hospital.
» Bellway Homes originally planned to build 320 dwellings with 30 per cent of them set aside for affordable sale or rent.* However, now the plans are for 351 dwellings plus 46 key worker flats. This shows that Bellway Homes care not for the area, environment or local community but merely squeezing as much profit out of the site as possible.
» Bellway Homes has made no arrangement to stop second home-owners being able to buy properties in the development. Meaning many properties could well be sold as buy-to-let properties. Which brings its own set of problems, especially in the midst of a housing crisis. And could help to price local people out of the area, as has happened in other areas.
» The proposed site is next door to Epping's ambulance station. With the increased traffic (residential and building), this could seriously affect response times for the ambulance service, especially during peak hours.
» Epping has only one secondary school and a couple of junior and infant schools. These, especially the secondary school will have great trouble coping with the large influx of school aged children. Which could result in children having to be bused out to neighbouring towns for schooling, which would exacerbate Epping’s traffic congestion and would help alienate the children in question, and inturn do great damage to social cohesion which could lead to anti-social behaviour.
» Epping suffers from low water pressure and quality; this will only be exacerbated by hundreds of new homes. This could lead to expensive infrastructure having to be installed at the cost of the tax payer to make the water usable.
» Approximately 6,200 passengers use Epping station every day, which has a car park of 508 spaces**. Both of these run at near full capacity daily, with the car park being full by 07:00 AM, if not earlier. The station cannot be extended to allow for more traffic, as the station itself is a listed building and any extra land that the station had was sold off for housing many years ago. Furthermore, the station serves people from surrounding villages such as, Coopersale, Epping Green, North Weald, Thornwood, Ongar and even as far a field as Harlow, which causes a massive parking problem.
» The distance between the proposed development and Epping station is .88 miles (as the crow flys). The distance by road or pavement is 1.4 miles.***
» Epping has several bus services, going to various locations in Essex, such as Harlow, Romford, Brentwood & Waltham Abbey. However, buses are mostly hourly and not terribly reliable. The buses going to Harlow, regularly run at full capacity in the mornings and late afternoons, due to students attending Harlow College.
» To-date Epping does not have an NHS dentist and only two Doctors surgeries.
» Fire services are handled by one retained fire station, which has only one fire engine. NOTE: an increase in traffic could slow fire response times, as the station lies on the already busy High Street. Supporting crews from Loughton & Harlow could too be affected with the traffic increase depending on where the incident was. This could also affect the attending of incidents on the M11 & M25.
*Epping Forest Guardian, 26th March 2007
**Figures from Transport for London
***Data from Google Earth