District Councillor Report: 2021/2022
Its time again for a retrospect of the events of the past year concerning the District Council.
Most of what I will report has already been mentioned in my monthly reports, but I will try
to provide a summary of the key points.
Highways issues, although the Counties responsibility, take up quite a lot of space in my
post bag. Potholes, deteriorating pavement surfaces and parking and at this time of the year
vegetation obstructing the pavements and road sign visibility. Generally, the latter has seen
some improvement but the previous three are reoccurring problems with little progress.
One positive note has been an “attempt” hopefully successful, to sort out the flooding
problem opposite the chemists shop. Apparently according to my sources, the Gas Board
had run a gas main through the pipe leading from the drains to join up with the stream in
Gaston Street. After nearly 10+ years of complaints on this issue, with suction vehicles
drawing out the water and claiming success, this more obvious (with hindsight) cause
perhaps should have been discovered sooner! Now we need some real rain to test out the
repair. The construction of the widened pavement across the Cattawade was reportedly for
pedestrians and cyclist to give them a safe transit to Manningtree station. Now that warmer
weather is bringing out the cyclists its interesting to see them blocking the highway and
ignoring an empty cycle path. And they wonder why they are not appreciated by motorists!
Planning seems to have slowed this year, with mainly minor village applications, but with
some 200+ homes approved but yet to start construction, that is perhaps understandable.
The Hadleigh Road site has started and had some minor modifications refused and others
approved, and I know there are residents in larger homes awaiting the possibility of
downsizing into the centre of the village.
The Local Plan is in limbo whilst the “Strategic location” of new housing is reviewed.
Apparently, the Inspector was not impressed by the random locations when we had some
4,900 permissions granted but not started and a 10 year target of some 4,300 new homes!
We could in theory shut up shop for 10 years with enough permissions in place already ,but
that creates other problems, and they are for central government to address with rule
changes!
Infrastructure improvements are still conspicuous by their absence and we need them
across all of the East of Babergh and not just the possible improvements to the Copdock
Interchange. The Freeport project is gaining momentum and with Bathside Bay in Harwich
and Gateway 14 at Stowmarket one thing is guaranteed and that is that traffic movements
will explode along the A12! We need the potential of highly skilled employment, but we
need the ability to get to that employment safely.
There is currently a “Parking Review” in progress across the District, and it will be contacting
villages to find out their concerns and potential measures and not just sticking to the Towns.

Heritage is still keeping a low profile on the “Brick Kiln” on Heath Road, and I am still waiting
for contact from the developer to see what we can do to maintain this feature as a Tourist
Buy in for the village. I was interested to read of John Constables fingerprint being found on
one of his landscapes, painted outdoors, but unfortunately the picture is in a Cambridge
museum. Apparently, he pioneered outdoors painting hence the fingerprint.
Council House rent increases will now occur in June after a mix up with the posting of
notification to tenants. There is considerable administration cost involved in the
recalculations etc and an investigation is apparently underway to find out what happened
and who pays whom.
Contact with council departments is still very sketchy with the working from home
exacerbated by the reduction in office space to apparently allow only about 1/3
rd
of the
workforce access at any one time. We need a simpler way for the public to contact the
council than the multi option 0300 number!(There is also plenty of criticism of the councils
web site , whether it works or not and how to navigate it!)
It remains to be seen how the vote to maintain the “Cabinet” system will reflect on the
councillors now that the “Cabinet” has politically fallen apart due to a split in the
Conservative group. A “Rainbow” cabinet will be in place for the remainder of the council’s
term and the new cabinet members will not have long to get to grips with their portfolios.
To summarise, more work needs to be done to improve the tourist “buy in” so that we can,
as a District, optimise our heritage assets and insure that we secure our fair share of the
“staycation” revenue, (Helped by Passport Office chaos) and also couple it with
infrastructure improvements, vehicle access, parking and general facilities and employment.
It’s the least that should be done having increased council tax again!

Cllr John Hinton
East Bergholt Ward.
May3rd 2022