Employment - Policy EMP1
An often-missed element of a local plan is the fact that it needs to provide employment areas as well as housing development. This seems reasonable as you can’t have more people if you’ve got nowhere for them to work. But does what Basildon Council is proposing for employment stack-up?
The new local plan aims to deliver over 28,000 new homes over the next 20 years. That’s roughly 67,000 more people in this borough based on an accepted measure of 2.4 people per household. Of that number approximately 63% will be of working age and therefore there will be around 42,000 people looking for employment if all the houses get built.
In the local plan the council is proposing to make some areas of land, some Green Belt, available for employment use. This totals 135 hectares. To put that amount of land into context, over 2,000 hectares of land, nearly all Green Belt, is required to deliver the 28,000 houses. It’s a relatively small amount.
Furthermore, there is no correlation between where most of these houses are being proposed and where the new employment in the borough is being considered. For example, about 9,000 new homes are planned around Billericay but no new employment is being proposed in the immediate area. The nearest employment area is several miles away (on Dunton Road).
However, there are absolutely no details on how many jobs these employment areas will actually create, or what sort of jobs they will be. Even if they were all office blocks, it’s unlikely they will get anywhere near providing 42,000 jobs.
If these areas produce manual employment, such as factories or warehouses, then the number of people these sites employ will very low compared to physical size of facility. With automation, and other efficiencies, the number of people to run large factories or warehouses is actually low today compared to what might have been seen in the past.
For example, the Costa Coffee roasting facility in Basildon provides coffee to all of the Costa outlets in the UK and across parts of Europe but employs less than 40 people. So even a large area of land doesn’t produce much employment.
We think there is an argument that the scale of housing development simply isn’t matched by adequate employment provision, and it’s totally dependent on new companies starting up or moving to Basildon borough. It’s not something that Basildon council has total control over.
In effect, the Local Plan will simply expand upon the dormitory towns that exist in the borough today. People will have to travel outside of the borough to work.
This has economic impacts as people that work far from where they live don’t tend to spend much money in their hometown to help the local economy. Much of their income goes on commuting and activities where they work.
This creates infrastructure issues too. Commuters will put more cars on the roads, will need parking spaces at stations if they get the train to work, and those train services will become even more busy.
This was a major factor a few years ago with the now withdrawn Local Plan. It would have resulted in severe overcrowding on the trains. Covid, and working from home, took away some of that pressure and train services were in part scaled back accordingly. But rail use is getting back to pre-Covid levels so the risk of them becoming overcrowded again is back in focus from the increased scale of development being proposed in the current Local Plan.
It should be remembered that the Local Plan will put more commuters on the trains at Wickford too, and proposed mass house building further along the line toward and including Southend will do the same at other stations. Trains could easily be full before they get to Billericay.
And those that chose to drive to work will put even more cars on the major routes through the area, specifically the A127, A13, A12 and M25, but local roads will see the impact too.
The sheer excessive scale of housing development and the rapid growth in the population simply isn’t balanced against local employment needs and that has wide ranging impacts. It’s a vicious circle that can’t be broken unless there’s a realisation that we are building far too many houses and they can’t be sustained within our local environment on any level.
Basildon council can’t create job. It needs others to do so. But it, or more specifically the Government, clearly wants to deliver the houses!
Please bear this in mind when responding go to the employment Policy EMP1.
Is the Local Plan justified, and therefore sound, from an employment perspective? Does it do, or guarantee, enough to provide the right levels of local employment?
The new local plan aims to deliver over 28,000 new homes over the next 20 years. That’s roughly 67,000 more people in this borough based on an accepted measure of 2.4 people per household. Of that number approximately 63% will be of working age and therefore there will be around 42,000 people looking for employment if all the houses get built.
In the local plan the council is proposing to make some areas of land, some Green Belt, available for employment use. This totals 135 hectares. To put that amount of land into context, over 2,000 hectares of land, nearly all Green Belt, is required to deliver the 28,000 houses. It’s a relatively small amount.
Furthermore, there is no correlation between where most of these houses are being proposed and where the new employment in the borough is being considered. For example, about 9,000 new homes are planned around Billericay but no new employment is being proposed in the immediate area. The nearest employment area is several miles away (on Dunton Road).
However, there are absolutely no details on how many jobs these employment areas will actually create, or what sort of jobs they will be. Even if they were all office blocks, it’s unlikely they will get anywhere near providing 42,000 jobs.
If these areas produce manual employment, such as factories or warehouses, then the number of people these sites employ will very low compared to physical size of facility. With automation, and other efficiencies, the number of people to run large factories or warehouses is actually low today compared to what might have been seen in the past.
For example, the Costa Coffee roasting facility in Basildon provides coffee to all of the Costa outlets in the UK and across parts of Europe but employs less than 40 people. So even a large area of land doesn’t produce much employment.
We think there is an argument that the scale of housing development simply isn’t matched by adequate employment provision, and it’s totally dependent on new companies starting up or moving to Basildon borough. It’s not something that Basildon council has total control over.
In effect, the Local Plan will simply expand upon the dormitory towns that exist in the borough today. People will have to travel outside of the borough to work.
This has economic impacts as people that work far from where they live don’t tend to spend much money in their hometown to help the local economy. Much of their income goes on commuting and activities where they work.
This creates infrastructure issues too. Commuters will put more cars on the roads, will need parking spaces at stations if they get the train to work, and those train services will become even more busy.
This was a major factor a few years ago with the now withdrawn Local Plan. It would have resulted in severe overcrowding on the trains. Covid, and working from home, took away some of that pressure and train services were in part scaled back accordingly. But rail use is getting back to pre-Covid levels so the risk of them becoming overcrowded again is back in focus from the increased scale of development being proposed in the current Local Plan.
It should be remembered that the Local Plan will put more commuters on the trains at Wickford too, and proposed mass house building further along the line toward and including Southend will do the same at other stations. Trains could easily be full before they get to Billericay.
And those that chose to drive to work will put even more cars on the major routes through the area, specifically the A127, A13, A12 and M25, but local roads will see the impact too.
The sheer excessive scale of housing development and the rapid growth in the population simply isn’t balanced against local employment needs and that has wide ranging impacts. It’s a vicious circle that can’t be broken unless there’s a realisation that we are building far too many houses and they can’t be sustained within our local environment on any level.
Basildon council can’t create job. It needs others to do so. But it, or more specifically the Government, clearly wants to deliver the houses!
Please bear this in mind when responding go to the employment Policy EMP1.
Is the Local Plan justified, and therefore sound, from an employment perspective? Does it do, or guarantee, enough to provide the right levels of local employment?
