Welcome to the website of the Buckhurst Hill Residents' Society. To learn about who we are and what we do, please click here Annual General Meeting
Tuesday 10 May 2022 7.30pm ST JAMES’ UNITED REFORMED CHURCH HALL PALMERSTON ROAD, BUCKHURST HILL
AGENDA
1. Welcome 2. Apologies for absence 3. Minutes of the last AGM 4. Chairman’s Report 5. Treasurer’s Report 6. Appointment of Auditor 7. Election of Committee and Officers 8. Changes to Constitution (if any) 9. Matters arising 10. Question Time
As laid down by the Constitution, all Officers and Members of the Committee must retire
The present Officers and Members are:
Chairman Jenn Page Vice Chairman Peter Foxton Treasurer Margaret Sinfield Membership Secretary Jenn Page Minutes Secretary David Freeman
Committee Members: Steven Neville, Anthony Young, Joseph Barkham, Andrew Clark, Jean Gibson (Associate Member)
All members of the Committee are willing to stand for a further year. There are four vacancies on the Committee. If you have internet access and are interested in joining the Committee, or would like to nominate someone else, please contact the Society at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. before 30 April. Committee meetings are held on the last Tuesday in each month. REFRESHMENTS WILL BE SERVED AT THE START OF THE EVENING The formal part of the evening will be followed by 'The Keeper's Tale', keeping Epping Forest safe and green a talk by Roderick Grosstephan Events
We have now reverted to public meetings. Please see the events tab above for details.
Planning
At time of writing, the Local Plan, which will determine development in Epping Forest District until 2033, has still not re-emerged for Approval. In Autumn 2021 EFDC published a list of Modifications to the Plan as a result of the Public Hearings in 2019, and invited further comments. Over 900 were submitted, and the Planning Inspector is still working her way through them in order to produce her final report on whether the Plan is legal and sound. The main objections concerned loss of greenbelt, reduction of pollution around Epping Forest, and sites elsewhere in the district. Only three comments were about the proposed sites in Buckhurst Hill, all submitted by BHRS. These were largely regarding factual errors still not corrected by EFDC. Substantive objections had been submitted at earlier stages of the process, and we hope the Planning Inspector will rule that none of the three sites are suitable for development in the way EFDC propose. The three sites are at 1 Powell Road, the Queen's Road lower car park, the shops block on Lower Queen's Road. As announced a year ago, EFDC have approved an Interim Air Pollution Mitigation Strategy (IAPMS) to protect the Special Area of Conservation around Epping Forest. This approval enabled EFDC to deal with the backlog of existing outstanding planning applications which had been legally blocked by Natural England. The IAPMS foresees a Clean Air Zone being imposed on the Forest which would require vehicle movements through the Forest to pay a charge for example driving from Woodford to Epping, or from Theydon Bois to the M25. The CAZ would be introduced in 2025 and apply to all petrol and diesel vehicles, but not electric. Details are still to be worked out. It remains to be seen whether the IAPMS satisfies the Planning Inspector in respect of the future large development sites proposed in the Local Plan, or if local Residents would support any such measure introduced by EFDC. Whetever policies might be in the Local Plan, it remains concerning that EFDC seem unable to enforce existing policies and plans submitted with planning applications. There are at least three sites in Buckhurst Hill where developers have exceeded what they were given approval to build, but no bricks have yet been removed. Indeed it is impossible to think of any case in recent times where EFDC have succeeded in forcing demolition.
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