Doddinghurst Surgery update

It's been a little while since I managed to find the time for any blogging, so here's a quick update on what's been going on over the past couple of weeks.

The most significant development is that Brentwood Council's planning officers published their report last week and have referred the application to the Planning Committee with a recommendation that it be approved. so the decision will now be taken by the committee at their meeting on Tuesday evening.

There are all kinds of inconsistencies and weaknesses in the officers' report, and letters have been sent to the Planning Committee members pointing this out and setting out all the reasons and all the legal precedents which mean that this development cannot be allowed to go ahead in the Green Belt.

Our campaign has attracted interest from the both the Green Party and the Campaign for the Protection of Rural England, both of whom have been to see the proposed site and have now made representations to Brentwood Council objecting to the proposed destruction of the Green Belt and the impact that the development would have on the Grade II listed building next door.

In a letter to the Brentwood Gazette, the GP, Dr Butler, has attempted unsuccessfully to refute the suggestion that he is a commercial enterprise trying to expand his business at the expense of the Green Belt and has again implied that if he doesn't get planning permission he'll shut up shop and leave altogether. As one of my neighbours said in a letter to the Gazette this week, this makes Dr Butler sound "rather like a child throwing his toys out of the pram because he can't get his own way".

I'll post some more in-depth info on the officers' report later on if I get a chance, but first I need to go and work out what I'm going to say in my three minute speech to the Planning Committee on Tuesday evening.

Meanwhile, if you want to help stop the destruction of the Green Belt, it's not too late to add your name to the online petition at www.doddinghurstsurgery.com. If you haven't signed already, please go and do it now!

Brentwood Gazette reports on plans for new GP surgery in Doddinghurst

Following the photoshoot on 28 May, this week's Brentwood Gazette carried a story entitled Furore as Surgery Plans New Facility which focused on how the proposed new surgery would overshadow the Grade-II listed building next door at Deal Tree Farm.

Resident of Deal Tree Farm, Catherine Russo, told the reporter how only a couple of years ago she was refused permission to convert an outbuilding into a stable block as it was felt by planning officials that the converted building would dominate her 15th century farmhouse. Yet now there are those who consider it appropriate to build a huge two storey surgery right next to her house - something which would be far more likely to dominate the farmhouse than the previously proposed stable block conversion.

The printed version of the article included a photo of angry local residents protesting next to the Green Belt field where the local GP hope to build their new surgery.

It also included a sidebar comment from Dr Nigel Butler in which he threatened that he and his fellow doctors would leave Doddinghurst altogether if the Council refused to grant permission for their new surgery in the Green Belt.

Personally, I doubt this would actually happen and, even if it did, the PCT would surely have suitable procedures in place to deal with such an eventuality.

So it will be interesting to see whether those responsible for planning decisions and the safeguarding of the Green Belt in the Borough of Brentwood allow themselves to be held to ransom by this type of potentially empty threat from Dr Butler.