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Billericay remembers the Mayflower, 400 years on At yesterday’s full meeting of Basildon Council, I was proud to move the following motion. “To be moved by Councillor Schrader – The Council notes that this year marks 400 years since one of the most significant sea journeys in human history – the voyage of the Mayflower…

The title of this blog comes from a quip made by Sir Iain Duncan Smith – a prominent backbench critic of the current Covid strategy – and I could not resist using it, as I think it sums up how a lot of us feel. I am as wearied by this pandemic as anybody. A…

Many of you have written to me about the recent Government White Paper on Planning Reform entitled Planning for the Future, to express your concerns about the sweeping changes being proposed. Without doubt, the Government is considering the most radical reform of the UK planning system since its inception at the end of the Second…

You will doubtless all have seen that the Prime Minister gave a press conference yesterday evening regarding the Coronavirus.  There has been a decision to enter a lockdown for four weeks from Thursday night until the beginning of December. This is obviously a drastic step that nobody wanted to happen. I know that our Member…

So last week was the inaugural meeting of Basildon Council’s new ‘Local Government Reorganisation and Transition Committee’, the presumptuously-named full-blown service committee that the Labour-led Administration have set up to ‘consider’ the issue of Local Government Reform (LGR). To be fair, the Government is preparing a White Paper on what some would argue is a…

Following on from yesterday’s widely-reported decision by Essex County Council to apply to the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care to pre-emptively place Essex under the Tier 2 (High alert) Covid-19 restrictions, the Health Secretary has this morning confirmed in the House of Commons that, on reviewing the case presented by the County…

As you will all be aware, the Prime Minister has announced a new three-tier system of local lockdown rules, to help slow the spread of Covid-19. Essex is, for the time being, at the ‘Medium’ (Tier 1) alert level, which means that we here in Billericay and the rest of the Borough of Basildon will…

Update on the Basildon Local Plan Examination As many of you will recall, the Basildon Borough Local Plan 2014 –2034 was submitted by the then Conservative Administration to the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government on 28th March 2019 for its ‘Examination in Public’ (EIP), which is the next legal phase in…

This evening I attended a meeting over Zoom between officers of Basildon Borough Council and local retailers and business owners in Billericay High Street to discuss the safe re-opening of the High Street, as we move into the next phase of the easing of the lockdown from Monday. The High Street falls within my Billericay…

I and my colleagues are aware of the terrible littering situation at Lake Meadows and I am absolutely appalled by the way some people are treating our beautiful park.   People come from far and wide to use Lake Meadows. It is a wonderful, award-winning public facility and it is outrageous that some people apparently…