COLCHESTER CITY COUNCIL SETS ZERO BUDGET FOR SEA DEFENCE
Last week Conservative City councillors proposed spending £150,000 to develop a proper strategy for sea defence. It’s an urgent need – sea level is currently rising at 4mm a year and the mid-range projections from the UK’s climate change committee expect it to rise by another 25-35cm in the next 25 years. That is expected to massively increase the extent of both coastal erosion and flooding.
It won’t just affect Mersea, but also places like Rowhedge and Wivenehoe – currently represented by Labour and Lib-Dem Councillors, not to mention the Hythe flooding far more often when the tide comes in.
However, what should really concern us is that the present rise in sea level will mean that in a few years the sea walls built immediately after the 1953 floods, will start to be regularly overtopped. Those floods were a 1:50 year probability at the time, but because sea level has risen 20cm since then, they are already now a 1:10 year probability.
Yet, almost all Labour, Lib-Dem and Green Councillors, voted against spending even this relatively modest amount on sea defence - with the courageous exception of Wivenhoe Councillor Sean Kelly. Instead, they voted for a budget which allocates £400,000+  for tackling the global climate emergency, while setting a zero budget for local sea defence.
Labour Councillor Lee Scordis, cabinet member for the environment whose job description specifically includes ‘sea defence’, even claimed it wasn’t worth spending £150,000 on sea defence, despite himself being both city and county councillor for the Hythe.
As Conservatives we would like to reassure local residents, including those most affected by rising sea levels in places like the Hythe, Rowhedge and Wivenhoe, as well as Mersea – that we will continue to champion this issue on your behalf.
Dr Martin Parsons
Conservative spokesman on sustainability and Councillor for Mersea and Pyefleet
 
 

Hythe flooding
One of the issues affecting the Hythe flooding (County Standard 2 January) which no-one seems to be talking about is that since the Port of Colchester officially closed in 2001 UK sea-level has been rising 3mm a year. In North Essex the land has also been sinking at around 1mm a year due to what geologists call ‘isostatic readjustment’. So, relative sea-level in Colchester is now around 10cm higher than it was 25 years ago.
One of the problems this creates at the Hythe is “tide-locking” – where the incoming tidal water prevents the freshwater in the river from escaping downstream.
The mid-range projections from the UK’s Climate Change Committee suggest UK sea-levels will rise by a further 25-35cm over the next 25 years. So, the situation at the Hythe will get significantly worse unless urgent action is taken.
I would suggest two things are needed – first, the height of sea-defence walls needs to be raised.
Secondly, rainfall runoff from the land, which will increase with new housing developments, needs to be properly managed to ensure it doesn’t all get into the river at the same time. Similar issues have long been dealt with very successfully in low-lying rural areas such as Suffolk and Norfolk through the use of sluice-gates operated by internal drainage boards. These are small low-cost organisations funded by stakeholders, including landowners and the local council. 
For the last year and half I have been urging the leadership of Colchester City Council to focus on tackling the LOCAL impacts of climate change including sea-level rise. Regrettably, the repeated response of the council’s current Lib-Dem/Labour leadership is that they wish to focus instead on global climate change. 
As Conservatives we disagree and believe the priority for a local council should ALWAYS be the local area.
Dr Martin Parsons
Councillor for Mersea and Pyefleet (Cons) and
Conservative spokesman on sustainability
 

Less than a year ago, the new Labour government dramatically changed the planning law, increased Colchester City Council’s house building target by a whopping 40% and made it legally compulsory for the council to provide enough sites to build them on.
The council’s planning officers duly produced a plan as to where all those houses could go. Few of us liked it, particularly with the increased congestion it will bring to urban area and thousands of houses it puts in rural areas.  But last week, as a local plan committee we voted to give the public a chance to say exactly what they think of it in a public consultation.
However, barely a week later – and before the public consultation has even started, the government has just shifted the goal posts yet again by announcing yet another massive change to planning law.  This included 1. planning permission being given “by default” near railway stations like Marks Tey; and even worse 2. requiring local councils to “inform” the government if they plan to refuse planning permission for sites with more than 150 proposed houses. This is explicitly stated to be so that the government minister can simply approve them himself without even holding a planning inquiry.
In other words, if a developer wants to build 150 or even 1,500 houses in any rural community then the minister can simply steamroller them through and there would be absolutely nothing the local council could legally do to stop it.
Local people deserve to be treated much better than this by the government – whatever political colour it is.
Dr Martin Parsons
Councillor for Mersea and Pyefleet (Cons) and Conservative spokesman on Sustainability 

New town proposal an undemocratic abuse of power
The decision by the Lib-Dem/Labour coalition running Colchester City Council to propose a new town of 10-24,000 new houses at Mark’s Tey is a shocking betrayal of local people.
The decision to submit this proposal to the government’s New Towns’ Commission looking for sites to start  building 100 new towns “before the next election” was an outrageous abuse of power. It bypassed normal democratic procedures – being neither formally approved by the cabinet nor were those of us on the local plan committee even informed of it.
The site is wholly unsuitable with the garden-community originally proposed there having been rejected by the planning inspector in 2020, partly because of totally inadequate transport links. Since then, not only do we not have the funding for the A120 scheme, but the government has just cancelled the desperately needed A12 improvements.
What is also clear is that is that this proposal did not come out of nowhere. At the 5 November meeting of the council’s local plan committee, four Labour councillors – Martyn Warnes, Dave Harris, Mike Lilley and Lee Scordis used the ‘Have your say’ section, to argue that the council should build a massive development at Mark’s Tey. In May Labour formed a coalition with the Lib-Dems to control the council. Now this is presented to a government commission as official council policy – despite never having been approved by either the cabinet or local plan committee.
However, a new town at Mark’s Tey is highly likely to be in addition to the 20,000+ new houses the Labour government have already required Colchester to build – and which we already lack adequate water, sewage and transport infrastructure for.
This is a shoddy and wholly undemocratic way to run a local council.
Our beautiful local area should not be sacrificed in this manner.
Dr Martin Parsons
Conservative Spokesman on Sustainability
And Colchester City Councillor for Mersea and Pyefleet

Recently Environment Secretary, Steve Reed said the UK will run out clean water and have to introduce “water-rationing” within 10 years unless there is a huge investment in water and sewage.
What local residents should know is that buried in the evidence on water and sewage for Colchester’s local plan is a statement that Colchester and surrounding rural areas are “predicted to go into supply deficit by 2025”.  In other words, as from this year there will not be enough water to meet the needs of the existing local population, let alone the 1,300 new houses the government have said Colchester must build for each of the next 15 years.
This is due to 1. Colchester’s recent population growth and 2. less water being available due to “climate change” creating a serious risk of the groundwater aquifer which supplies much of our water being made ruined by salt water being sucked into it.
I have lived in a country where there was water-rationing and it raises significant public health issues: you may not be able to flush the toilet for several hours daily, so flies land on both poo in the toilet and kitchen food; nor can you turn the tap on – so people get dehydrated with the elderly being particularly vulnerable.  There is therefore a serious risk that failing to address this looming water crisis could contribute to the Colchester area seeing a significantly higher level of excess deaths during a heatwave.
Sadly, at last week’s local plan committee, the chair, Councillor Tim Young rather ungraciously blocked a motion I proposed, that the council seek an urgent meeting with Housing Secretary, Angela Rayner, asking her to ensure Colchester gets the water and sewage infrastructure it needs to safely deliver the government’s house-building target.
Why a Labour councillor wants to stop the council meeting Labour minsters to get a better deal for Colchester is beyond me.
Dr Martin Parsons
Colchester City Councillor for Mersea and Pyefleet (Cons)

Since being elected last May I have repeatedly challenged the leader of Colchester City Council over claims that ‘tackling the climate emergency’ is the council’s first priority. The council’s Lib-Dem leadership does absolutely nothing to tackle the most significant impact of climate-change on our area – rising sea-levels and rapidly increasing coastal erosion. In fact, it sets a zero budget for sea-defence.
Last week Conservative councillors proposed a budget amendment to re-allocate £100,000 from the “sustainability” budget to sea-defence. This issue affects not only Mersea and Pyefleet which I have the privilege to represent, but also Old Heath and the Hythe – including Rowhedge and Wivenhoe wards. Regrettably, with the brave exception of Wivenhoe councillor Sean Kelly, the Labour and Liberal-Democrat councillors representing these wards voted against this.
This is not a new issue. Local sea levels are now 37cm higher than in 1900. They are currently rising at 4mm a year, but the mid-range predictions from the UK’s climate-change committee expect them to rise by 25-35cm over the next 25 years. Research from Imperial College suggests rising sea-levels will increase coastal erosion rates by 700 percent. While in 2022 the BBC publicised research showing North-Essex and the Blackwater estuary were among the council areas most affected by rising sea-levels.
One cannot help thinking the current Lib-Dem leadership of Colchester Council are somewhat like a person who parks their car on the beach at low-tide (we do get such visitors on Mersea!), becomes engrossed reading a story in the Guardian about the effects of melting sea-ice on polar bears – and falls asleep at the wheel, only waking up when the water is lapping at their feet.
When it comes to tackling climate-change it is surely time for the Lib-Dems running Colchester City Council to wake up and focus on local issues!
Dr Martin Parsons
Colchester City Councillor for Mersea and Pyefleet
 

The suggestion by Mr Akker and his associates (Letters 3 January) that Mersea councillors only became concerned about Mersea surgery after their November petition is absurd.
Both Sir Bernard Jenkin MP and Mersea councillors – including those who were councillors long before I was elected last May - have been seeking to resolve this issue for many years. In October I and other Mersea councillors on Colchester and Essex County Councils wrote to the Health Secretary.
The timing of that letter – which was entirely non-party political - was the day after the new government’s first budget, when they had announced plans for 40,000 new appointments. We wrote to say that whilst we welcomed this, we needed to draw his attention to the fact that on Mersea people couldn’t even register with a GP. This is because there is only one surgery and over the summer it had stopped taking on new patients due to the increase it had already experienced as a result of new housing developments on the island.
We therefore asked Mr Streeting both to take urgent action to ensure Mersea residents can access a GP and to urgently meet with Angela Rayner, the Deputy Prime Minister who had just imposed large compulsory house building targets on Colchester – asking her to exempt areas currently without GP access from them.
Dr Martin Parsons
Colchester City Councillor for Mersea and Pyefleet

I am delighted to set the record straight (letters 13 Dec) about the debate in Colchester City Council’s December meeting. A motion proposed by Green and Labour councillors wanted to allow people of any nationality to vote in local elections, even if they had only arrived the previous week.
I spoke as someone who has myself been a long-term resident of two countries in Asia. When I lived in Pakistan, I learned the language, wore local clothes, ate local food – and I hope as an aid worker contributed much to the local community. However, it would have been completely inappropriate for me to demand the “right” to vote. I was a guest in their country and knew that at some point I would return to the UK.
The reason all Conservative councillors voted against this motion was that it sought to remove the distinction between being a British citizen and being a temporary resident. Being a citizen is about identity and which country your ultimate loyalty is to. It carries both rights, such as voting, and responsibilities. Those responsibilities can include being required to fight for your country in time of war – as our friends in Ukraine are sadly now only too well aware.  
There is a well-established pathway to citizenship for those born overseas who make this country their permanent home.  It involves several years’ UK residency and taking the UK citizenship test to ensure they understand our historic British values. Essex County Council then hosts a wonderful ceremony where new British citizens swear an oath of loyalty and are awarded a certificate of citizenship.
I would gently challenge those demanding the “right” to vote or become a local councillor, ‘why are you not prepared to give that commitment of loyalty to the UK?’
Dr Martin Parsons
Colchester City Councillor for Mersea and Pyefleet (Cons)

The County Standard is absolutely right – we do have a crisis on Mersea, with some people unable to register with a GP. This is due to the island’s only surgery stating they do not feel they can safely take on any new patients due to the increase in patients already resulting from recent housing developments on the island.
However, there is a lot of hard work which has been going on behind the scenes to try to find a solution to this. Sir Bernard Jenkin MP has long been in discussions with the Suffolk and North East Essex Integrated Care Board who are responsible for local primary health care, to try to get then to resolve this, as well as meeting with the GPs themselves.
While in October, as local councillors we wrote to the Heath Secretary, Wes Streeting explaining the situation on Mersea and asking him both to urgently address the issue and also to meet with Angela Rayner, the Housing Secretary asking her to exempt areas without GP access from the government’s new house building targets. Whilst we have yet to receive a reply, Sir Bernard Jenkin MP is seeking to ensure we get one!
The 1944 NHS White Paper produced by Churchill’s wartime government, which became the blueprint for the creation of the NHS, set out a basic principle of everyone having free access to GPs at the point of need. That is now no longer available to everyone on Mersea. That is why, as Mersea councillors we have written to the Health Secretary, asking him to intervene.
Councillor Robert Davidson
Councillor Martin Parsons
Councillor Carl Powling
County Councillor John Jowers