The Traffic Plan Sham

The most frustrating thing about this campaign, is that when we finally get council officers to do anything to help residents, they always find a way to wriggle out of it.

And don’t get us started on the Lib Dems, who continue to chase the Muslim vote over resident’s rights.

Where’s the consultation you promised us sue ?

You may remember we published some emails between Cllr Young and a local resident from 2023, you can read them here. Most notably was the one from June 2023, when Cllr Young promises not only consultation, but also that nothing would be put in place without the agreement of residents.

15th September 2023 Cllr young discusses the draft plan With south Essex Parking partnership

Information we obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, shows that Cllr Young met with South Essex Parking Partnership to discuss the Traffic Management Plan that had been agreed with Hamptons/CMS

Now bearing in mind that this was some 6 months before Ramadan was due to start, there was plenty of time to consult residents. But that never happened. We suspect that SEPP and Cllr Young knew that residents would not agree to the farcical Traffic Management Plan. But what did happen was far worse.

Secret meetings with handpicked residents and council officers

We have since learnt that two low key meeting took place in early March and April, attended by Cllr Young, SEPP, the police, council officers , two or three local residents, CMS and the owners of Caffe Marconi (we’re not sure why they attended).

Now our problem with this is:

• handpicking the attendees hardly encourages public participation

• it’s not a proper consultation

• it was too late to change anything in the Traffic Plan

Why not just call a public meeting or ask us to organise a consultation ? The truth is that residents saw that the Traffic Management Plan had more holes in it than a Lib Dem manifesto. The council will of course claim that they have acted to solve the mosque parking issues.

Where this leaves residents

So we have an legally unenforceable Traffic Management Plan, that the council claim to be monitoring, and will review at a later date. Even if we did provide evidence of serious issues, the council cannot enforce the Traffic Management Plan, or take any kind of legal action against the mosque. So monitoring and review will achieve nothing.

In a recent email sent to us by a resident, Nick Binder of SEPP spelled out the nature of the Traffic Plan “The Plan contained suggested actions for implementation on the public Highway and potential utilisation of the Hamptons site to assist with the management of parking and traffic flow. It was acknowledged that the Plan needed to be fluid and would need to be tested and reviewed with the option to make changes or improvements. It was also noted that the Plan did not form any contractual or legal obligations on behalf of the Hamptons Centre”

A point worth making here is that the Traffic Management Plan only gets used for Friday prayers and religious events linked to the mosque, and is not needed for any of the other uses of the venue. We estimate that happens more than 80 times a year, which hardly constitutes the “occasional use” that SEPP claim.

A resident did ask SEPP to quantify the term occasional , but never got an answer.

This is somewhat different to the views of Strategic Development who suggested the specified occasional use of the plan and overspill parking as 15 times a year, and were twitchy about the mention of funerals in the draft document:

We’d argue that the change of use has already taken place, and the Traffic Management Plan wouldn’t be needed at all, if Hamptons was really operating as a sports and leisure centre.

Remember that the Marconi Club was on that site for over 50 years, and never needed the council to step in and manage their parking !

BUT they didnt operate a mosque without planning permission

KBO