Road Closure

The Queens Road Closure Controversy: the Alternative View 

Commercial interests and pressure from the government to force new housing development on brown field sites have driven the push for development on Cook’s Shipyard since it closed more than fifteen years ago, and ever since it was earmarked for development, controversy has raged.  Local residents responded to letters from the planning authorities about the proposed development of the site over the years by making it clear that all the access routes to the site were completely unsuitable to take additional traffic.  The Shipyard Project, supported by local people, fought unsuccessfully to raise money to buy the site for a social amenity.  

In 1993 Edward Symmons Real Estate Professional Services were brought in by NatWest, as receivers of Cook’s Shipyard, to sort out access to the site and resolve a number of complex planning and environmental issues, including site contamination arising from the previous use of the site.  Eventually they stated they had been able to resolve these issues and the site could now be sold on for development. 

The site was purchased by Lexden Restorations late in 2001 Although Wivenhoe Town Council at first expressed their reservations about the generation of additional traffic and the impact on other existing amenities, they eventually came to the conclusion that the plans for the site were innovative and exciting. Lexden Restorations were granted outline consent for their development scheme for the shipyard in March 2002, and following this the Town Council set up a Section 106[1]Working Party comprised of Peter Hill, Stephen Ford, Councillors David Craze, Mary Hignell and one representative each from the Anglesea Road Residents Association, Wivenhoe Society, the Shipyard Project, Brook Street and East Street Residents Association and Wivenhoe Fisherman’s Association. Their purpose was to draw up an agreement, which also included matters to do with access to the site.  Unfortunately they did not seek to include a representative from Queens Road.  

In July 2002 Colchester Borough Council came up with the optional proposal that Queens Road should be closed in order to encourage/force traffic to use the Valley Road route to access the construction site to improve traffic flow management. At a consultation exercise held at the Town Council offices, residents from Queens Road supported these proposals, although we were told that other residents had different views. We were never allowed to see these comments (we did ask): all we know is that 50 comments were made by people who lived on 10 streets.  We assumed at the time that these views would be fairly evenly balanced, with residents who lived on Valley Road not wanting construction traffic travelling that way any more than residents on Queens Road wanting it travelling via their road.  Alarm bells began to ring however, when an item appeared on the Wivenhoe web site dated 15 September 2002 stating that the Section 106 Working Party had decided that they did not agree with Colchester Borough Council’s recommendations, because they felt that if Queens Road were stopped up, or became one way, residents in Valley Road would suffer because they were unable to park their cars on their steep driveways, experienced flooding for short periods, and because children used the route to travel to Millfields school.  (They did not mention at the time that Queens Road was also used as route by children travelling to school and also experienced flooding at times of heavy rainfall). Worst of all they declared that Queens Road should become the ‘primary access route’ to Cook’s shipyard for people working on the site.  They also proposed that Queens Road should take two-way traffic.  

Understandably residents on Queens Road were horrified that Wivenhoe Town Council had made these decisions without any consultation with themselves.  Efforts were made to contact the Town Council and letters were written in response to articles outlining these proposals, written by Peter Hill in the Wivenhoe News.  Unfortunately our approaches were consistently brushed aside by the Town Council and it soon became clear that they had made their mind up and were not going to listen to our representations in spite of the fact that we would be the people who would suffer most if the road were to be left open.

At this point we decided to bypass the Town Council altogether and go straight to Colchester Borough Council Planning Department.  We contacted Richard Gower the Portfolio Holder for Planning and Transportation, who was the man who would make the decision about the closure, and invited him to visit us to walk round the site and listen to a number of residents’ views.  We followed this up by submitting a detailed report to Colchester Borough Council in November 2003, with accompanying photographic evidence, a petition signed by 54 residents and information about the displacement of soil to the rear of some of our properties. 

In March 2005 we were delighted to hear that a decision had been made to close the road. The Town Council on the other hand were extremely annoyed that their recommendations had been ignored and Lexden Restorations also decided that they could no longer continue with the site.  The matter was then passed to Essex County Council in order for them to process the various highways issues with regard to the site and we were told to watch out for the Public Notices that would appear when all had been determined.  At this time people would again have a chance to object to the decision to close the road and we were also told that this would be a good time to write in and remind Essex County of our support for the closure of the road. 

In Spring 2006, Taylor Woodrow and their sub-contractors, Knight Environmental, moved onto the site and signs were displayed referring to the removal of hazardous material.  A new yellow sign appeared at the junction of High Street and Queens Road directing (supposedly) sales traffic to the site. However massive plant machinery and heavy vehicles began to access the site via Queens Road instead, ignoring the designated route for construction traffic, which was intended to go via Bowes Road, Bobbits Way and Valley Road. We made frequent approaches to Paul Bradford who was dealing with the highways issues at Essex County, to ask him if he could do something to prevent these vehicles from coming along the road and damaging not only people’s property but also their cars.  At some point we referred to the closure of Queens Road and were taken aback to hear that he had got (or been given) the impression that our views were ‘in the minority’.  We then asked him if he had not seen a copy of the report and other material that we had submitted in November 2003 and he said he did not know about this.  This seemed very odd so we sent copies of all the material to him again and asked that these be taken into consideration when any final decision was made.  At about the same time an article written by Peter Hill appeared in the Summer Issue of Wivenhoe news stating that the council were ‘implacably opposed’ to Queens Road becoming a cul-de-sac and the controversy started to pick up speed again.  

As it became clear that the Town Council were still determined to oppose the closure of the road, we circulated about 105 letters to neighbours on Queens Road and nearby streets to let them know what was happening, and suggested that we should set up a ‘Queens Road Residents Association’ at the earliest opportunity.  This was intended to give us more status and to ensure that it would be more difficult for the Town Council to continue to ignore us.  We had a good response from 46 residents which we thought was sufficient for us to justify setting up an Association.  On 18 June we held an informal planning meeting which resulted in a decision to go ahead and form the Association.  We held our inaugural meeting on 8 July 2006, with support from the Colchester Federation of Residents Associations.

In the meantime, on 30 June 2006 the Public Notices with regard to the various traffic issues finally appeared in the local paper and on telegraph poles outside residents’ homes. Immediately we stepped up our campaign and composed an appropriate letter to be sent to Philip Thomson at Essex County from the Association; began collecting signatures for a petition; and encouraged people to write in individual letters to Essex County to support the closure of the road.  We then had to write another letter in response to our Ward Councillor’s submission to Philip Thomson, which we though was biased and contained flawed arguments, and a further response to Wivenhoe Council’s twelve page submission, which we also thought was biased and contained a number of faulty arguments.  The deadline for submissions was 24 July 2006 and we are now waiting for a final decision on the closure to be made.  We believe that Essex County have received more than 200 responses both for and against the various traffic measures proposed, including the controversial closure of the road.  This included our own petition signed by 143 people and a petition signed by 162 people who wanted the road to be left open.  We did notice however that a sheet of this second petition was still sitting in the Post Office gathering signatures, for several days after the deadline, after we had removed our own petition in order to send it in time to meet the deadline.  We don’t know if this sheet was included in the 170 signatures or not?

Why Did We Want the Road to be Closed? 

Our reasons for wanting the road to be closed were as follows:  Queens Road forms part of the Conservation Area in Wivenhoe that was designated on 17 June 1969 after it had been described as ‘outstanding’ in the Council for British Archaeology’s List of Towns of Architectural and Historic Interest.  Particular reference was made at the time to the Victorian terraces around the railway line.   These fragile and vulnerable properties are more than 140 years old; the houses sit right on the road without benefit of a front garden or off-road residential parking; the road itself is very narrow and situated on a steep hill with a v-shaped dip; the pavements are either very narrow or non-existent; heavy traffic cannot negotiate the road even one-way, let alone two-way as the Town Council have wanted; and there has been displacement of soil to the rear of some of our properties which obliged Essex County Council to shore them up three years ago to stop them from falling into the school playground.  These points alone we felt were sufficient to prohibit any further additional traffic from using the road.  The Town Council’s view that the road should be kept open so that the burden of traffic could be equally shared between the access roads, in our view was a false argument because we felt that because Queens Road is long and straight it would immediately become the main access route to the shipyard development as the Town Council have wanted all along. That they still adhere to these views is exemplified by the disproportionate amount of time they have spent, in their twelve page submission to Essex County (see www.wivenhoe.gov.uk), trying to emphasise the dangers of traffic using the Valley Road route, but completely failing to point out that exactly the same dangers they describe apply to Queens Road. We also feel that they have failed to recognise the traffic chaos and congestion that might result at all the junctions with Queens Road (e.g. the High Street, Park Road, Valley Road, and Anglesea Road) if all access routes were left open and two-way.  For these reasons we support the permanent closure of the road.