Birchanger Parish Council

Uttlesford District Council has published the formal notice of election for the parish council election on 2nd May 2019.

Uttlesford District Council has published the formal notice of election for the district council election on 2nd May 2019.

Attached is a list of neighbourhood watch coordinators. Please report anything suspicious to the one allocated to your address,

List updated 31/01/2019

The occupants of the land at the end of Birchanger Lane have lodged an appeal against the enforcement notice issued by Uttlesford District Council. 

The enforcement notice requires the occupants to stop using the land for residential purposes, to remove caravans, bunding and paraphernalia and to disconnect services.

Essex Highways has revised their plans for Junction 8 of the M11 and the Birchanger Lane/A120/A1250 junction. The proposed layout, forcing all traffic leaving the village to turn left, has been dropped. Instead there's a single staggered traffic-light controlled junction allowing traffic from Birchanger to turn left, right or go across to Dunmow Road. A letter announcing the news was sent to Keith Williams, the Birchanger Parish Council clerk, today.

There are elections for parish and district councillors in May and Uttlesford District Council is holding events for those interested in standing. The first of these is later this month, on Monday 21st January, at the UDC building in Saffron Walden. The text of the UDC announcement follows.

Everything you wanted to know about being a councillor

Are you interested in representing your community? Do you think you could help make a difference? Have you ever thought about standing to be a councillor?

Birchanger Parish Council has received the following from Uttlesford District Council.

This is to provide you with an update on the site Land North of Birchanger.  A planning Enforcement Notice has been served on the site this morning including on named parties.  The requirements of the notice are:

As many of you will have noticed the closure of Birchanger Lane to install fibre is well under way. At the moment the closure is between Tot Lane and High View, and will proceed along the lane as the work progresses over the next few weeks. Access to residents will be maintained and the road will be reopened at night. The work will end on 20th December but will continue in January.

Parking will still be allowed, but some residents may be asked to move their vehicles if the work requires it.

It's been some time since we posted about the travellers' site at the end of Birchanger Lane. Uttlesford District Council is fulfilling its promise and letting us know what's happening, which is precisely nothing. The last update we received informed us that the final documents required for the planning application for change of use to be validated have still not been received.

We'll post further information when we have it.

Posted: 26/10/18 

Updated: Essex County Council has resubmitted its request for a certificate of lawful development of the roundabout at the M11 end of Birchanger Lane. It now shows the new piece of road allowing buses and, we hope, residents to access Dunmow Road, but there seems to be nothing in the application to confirm or deny that. However Essex Highways, at https://www.essexhighways.org/highway-schemes-and-developments/major-sch..., says 

The Parish Council has received a letter from Essex Highways that confirms that the bus lane will, subject to further traffic modelling and ongoing monitoring, be available to all vehicles.

91 people, mostly Birchanger residents but a few from outside the village, completed our questionaire asking for views on the proposed M11 junction 8 works. The results are in, and you have made your views known in no uncertain manner.

There may still be one or two printed forms that we have not yet received, but our findings so far are as follows.

86% of those who expressed an opinion thought the scheme as a whole was bad or very bad.

Other highlights:

Members of the council and volunteers counted vehicles leaving the village at the motorway end of Birchanger Lane on Monday, 10th September between 0630 and 0930. We did this so that we could challenge the case made by Essex County Council from a position of knowledge. We counted two things: vehicles leaving the lane and turning left towards the motorway; and traffic going straight ahead into Dunmow Road or turning right onto the A120(W).

Over the three-hour period 221 vehicles were counted. 118 (53%) of those turned left and 103 continued to Dunmow Road or the A120(W).