The National Grid are busy consulting and lobbying on  a new 400kV connection between Bramford substation in Suffolk and Twinstead Tee in Essex. The line is needed to connect a number of new power generators to the national electricity transmission network in East Anglia.

The Preferred Route runs for the most part alongside the existing 400kV overhead line. Let me declare an interest: the route passes to the east and south of Hadleigh and existing pylons are visible from my kitchen window.

There are still decisions to be made and the “Bury Not Blight” campaign now focuses on burying the cables and the associated costs.

At a recent forum meeting a county councillor was understood to ask “What happens in January?” The puzzled looks met with the following explanation “In January the County Council will be switching off the street lighting after midnight.” There was obviously no answer forthcoming.

I suppose the correct answer to the query should have been that during the day the underground cables would be used as the pylons would be visible. During the night  when they were not visible the National Grid would use the pylons.

http://www.nationalgrid.com/uk/electricity/MajorProjects/BramfordTwinstead.
http://www.suffolk.gov.uk/NR/rdonlyres/A4F84FE5-1AE3-406A-8A15-4FC61CB70CC2/0/amenitygroupspart2.ppt

The Babergh Development Framework consultation document is 109 pages long and could replace Mogadon once it has passed the tests required our National Health Service. Around the table at Monday’s briefing meeting were a number of views – not surprising as people came from all over the district. A lady from East Bergholt (2007 population 1597) put forward the view that their village was large enough and did not need to be upgraded to a small town. The people from Thorpe Morieux (2005 population 257) wants development to encourage younger people into the village. A lady from Hintlesham (2005 population 580)explained that they were happy in having a village shop which did not sell newspapers or provide day to day groceries. They preferred newcomers to buy or build the upper value houses.

Hintlesham does have some social housing and a very nice village hall and social club. It also has a respected primary school and a pub (the George). I suppose the other reason for liking the village location is because it is easy to access (& egress).

As for Hadleigh I’m happy that the plan for us to double our 8,000 population over twenty years has been discarded as it would fundamentally change our character and severely stress our community.

One of the anomalies thrown up in the briefing was that we are providing for about 9,700 new jobs in Babergh by 2031. The question was asked how come we are creating four new jobs for every home to be built. We were told that the figures were not directly comparative – but by pressing the point we were told that some of the jobs were to be created on the Ipswich fringe for Ipswich people, since there was a shortage of land for job creation in Ipswich. The reason for this shortage is because Ipswich had encouraged businesses to move outside their boundaries to be replaced by housing. Businesses bring no direct monetary benefit to the local authorities – instead it goes  to the Central Government and is then redistributed. So where is the logic in providing for jobs which have no direct benefit to our tax payers and which instead leave us with the pollution and other costs associated with providing business infrastructure. We were later told that some of the 9,700 jobs were associated with previously approved planning applications. However the underlying questions were not answered – instead we were told that it is not a simple as that. Fortunately/unfortunately we ran out of time before simple answers could be provided.

For more information see http://www.babergh.gov.uk/Babergh/Home/Planning+and+Building+Control/Local+Development+Framework/