Local Plan 2011-2031 Proposed Submission Draft

This email is to state my opposition th proposed housing development of over 500 new houses in and around Knebworth as part of the North Hertfordshire Local Plan.
I would like to oppose the plan for the three reasons as laid out below.
1. Poor access
Due to the extremely restricted access to all of the proposed sites, most of which are accessed via single-track or narrow roads, the area will suffer from further traffic congestion. The main access roads within the village are: Swangleys Lane, Gipsy Lane and Bridge Road, Deards End Lane, Gun Road, Station Road, Old Knebworth Lane and Watton Road. Of these roads Watton Road is the only one that is not single track but is itself extremely narrow. All of these roads become very hazardous or blocked when there is snow, Gipsy lane and the railway bridge at Watton Road have often flooded and become impassable.
The development plans have not taken these factors in to account in their selection of sites as these sites are clearly unsuitable.
2. Unsustainable increase in local traffic
The village already suffers from traffic issues including the bottle-neck in the High Street which is the main through road in the village. This bottle-neck occurs in regular traffic with morning and evening commuting, school runs, visitors to the shops and amenities, bus routes and business deliveries.
Whenever there is a problem on the A1 motorway the only link between Junction 6 and Junction 7 is the B197 this increase in traffic causes complete gridlock in the High Street and surrounding streets.
Add to this the prospect of 500 plus new households to the area and it becomes very clear that the development plans are not suitable for the area.
3. Over burdened infrastructure
The local plan does not make provision to improve or even shore-up the local infrastructure problems which include poor parking facilities for the train station and the local shops, an overcrowded train station unable to cater for the present level of passenger numbers, with a short platform that due to financial constraints could not be upgraded to allow for the longer trains needed to stop at the station in order to cope with numbers. Also the village has suffered with serious flooding in the past due to a drainage system that was designed to cope with the 1970s housing developments but which fails to handle the run-off from surrounding fields and roads which in turn causes flooding further into the village.
The plan would overburden the existing infrastructure which is at present inadequate. The development plan is unsuitable for Knebworth.
I would be very grateful if you would consider these points as they not just opinions they are the facts about life in a rural village that could not support a plan forced upon it because of the financial interests of developers and the poorly advised decision makers in central government.