Further Proposed Modifications to the North Hertfordshire Local Plan 2011- 2031

LATE

I am writing to put forward my objection to the current plan for the proposed development of Chiltern Views in the village of Preston.

1. Traffic,

I currently live on Chequers Lane, there has been until lockdown a very high volume of traffic - not just residential but farm and commercial. It is a very small tight lane with parked cars on one section making access tight.

I understand that a survey was taken during lockdown to determine the traffic by the developers and/or council. In my opinion this has no validation - how can someone determine traffic density when no-one is driving a car as we are all locked down in our houses with only essential travel allowed. Even if this survey was taken on the easing of restrictions, this still in no way gives a true representation of the traffic density of Chequers Lane. In fact traffic has already increased due to more households working from home.

Chequers Lane has sewage and drainage problems already, this would add extra strain to services.


We already have the ‘rat run’ for cars cutting through preston to Luton as well.

2. Houses.

I do not understand why we have to accommodate Luton which is in Bedfordshire and we are not allowed to use their skip facilities anymore as we are Hertfordshire - why do we have to carry the can for their housing? Bedfordshire is a very underdeveloped county compared to Herts.

We have already met our quota of new homes for the 2011-2013 NHDC local plan by a factor of nearly 200%.

3. Princess Helena College
It has been suggested that this is used to provide an alternative site to accommodate the houses. I feel this must be looked at.

4. Resourses

Preston is supposed to a ‘classic sleepy English village’. This is fast being taken away from the character of the village. We have no shops, 1 pubs, no garage, no post office, an over-subscribed nursery and a primary school that currently accommodates most of the surrounding villages.

6. Communications.

We are supposed to a broadband fibre optic village. This may be so, but it doesn’t always work - more people work at home now and the dependency on wifi has increased a lot - we have an Open reach van on permanent standby at the junction box - how would this be addressed?

Bus service is Monday to Sats only - twice a day.