Cllr Chris Whitbread is the Leader of Epping Forest District Council, an Essex County Councillor for Epping and Theydon Bois and an HGGT Board Member. This blog first appeared in the October edition of the HGGT Newsletter.
It goes without saying that Harlow & Gilston Garden Town is going to be an exciting time for development, regeneration and future opportunities.
And for current Epping Forest residents it makes for a really interesting proposition.
Most of the focus has been on the 10,000 houses across seven Garden villages coming to Gilston in East Herts.
But Epping Forest sits on every other border of Harlow pretty much and 3000 Garden Town homes will be on our land across the proposed Water Lane, Latton Priory and East Harlow neighbourhoods.
We’re looking at West Essex being a go to place in the future.
Central to that will be Harlow & Gilston Garden Town and the opportunities that will bring to the whole area, connecting into East Herts with the new Gilston village proposals and associated infrastructure.
Epping already brings opportunity to the table for new and existing residents.
It’s facing London, there’s eight Underground stations plus Epping South with the North Weald airfield development and plans for a new leisure centre.
And then you’ve got the regeneration of Harlow Town Centre that’s key to the Garden Town.
With that will come more shopping and leisure opportunities so Epping residents will certainly benefit from what’s here locally and what’s on the way.
That’s great for our younger generation, both in attracting them to the local area and keeping them here.
Young people can really revitalise an area and take it forward and with that comes a pride in where you live.
All my sisters live in Harlow and they are really passionate about it.
For a lot of people that comes from the New Town and the original ideas that it was built on.
You’ll see that thinking with the Garden Town, past and present knitting together for the future.
People want to stay local and be close to their families if they can and Harlow has always had that history.
As children, we’d go over to the Harlow paddling pools on a Sunday afternoon and it was a great place to meet up with others and play in open space.
That sense of community is still important to people and with that comes a need for quality of housing.
I passionately believe that people should have an opportunity to own their own property.
Affordable properties with different types of tenure will come forward with the Garden Town and really help current and existing residents.
And if we’re going to create those opportunities then we have to accept that building will take place across a wide area.
That creates an interesting discussion because development, wherever it goes, is always going to be difficult.
We all want more homes but no-one seems to like new development.
I was listening to a programme on the radio recently that was talking about an area that was built in the 1980s.
Those residents, who benefitted from the original development, are now protesting against new builds going behind them.
But what the Garden Town allows is an opportunity to build better and avoid some of those big sprawling estates that sprung up decades ago.
Maybe people weren’t giving too much thought to what they were constructing and why?
I look around Epping now and see what developers like Higgins have built at Arboretum and Bellway over at Kingswood Park and they’re great quality and they all go back to the early-late 2000s.
It will be interesting to see what the designs of the Garden Town neighbourhoods will be like given technology has moved forward so quickly over that time.
None of us can avoid the cost of living crisis but if you’ve got a modern efficient home then that can drive down the cost of running the home.
With innovation, comes better heating, better insulation etc.
What we’re seeing is more people coming out of London than ever before.
They want quality of life and with that comes green space and that’s what the Garden Town will deliver in the future.
Critical to that delivery is the Garden Town’s five council collaboration and that really is the way forward for me.
The world that we’re living in today, and the pressures that modern local government is facing post pandemic, has brought us all closer together.
The Garden Town initiative has really underlined the importance of partnership working.
It means Harlow & Gilston Garden Town has great foundations for the future.
