WICKFORD: Builders vow flats plan will go ahead

BUILDERS are determined Wickford will get 173 new homes despite rumours their project had stalled.

Bradgate Developments has assured residents the new complexes being built in Lower Southend Road, Wickford, are on schedule and will be completed as planned.

Glen Charters, director of Bradgate Developments, said: "Phase one is virtually completed and we are continuing to regenerate Wickford with the Riverside Place project that is supported by the council and it will be delivered."

The flats form part of the council's plans to regenerate the town centre and the surrounding area known as the Wickford Master Plan.

It is in place to help the council meet the stringent housing target set by the Government of 10,800 extra homes by 2011.

Meanwhile the council is staying firm over its bid to buy up a postal sorting office that stands at the centre of what will become the second phase of the development.

Leader of Basildon District Council, Malcolm Buckley, explained they are preparing for a public inquiry into their application for a compulsory purchase order following a challenge by Wickford Action Group.

Protesters collected hundreds of signatures opposing the buy-up and the Post Office has also objected.

Cllr Buckley said: "It is in the hands of the developers but we are confident it will be completed.

"The way it works will be that we buy the sorting office and then hand it straight over to the developers but we hope it doesn't come to that, we hope the Post Office can negotiate with the developers and find some common ground."

Wickford Action Group chairman, Alan Ball, 51, of Cedar Avenue, Wickford, said his group had now collected more than 500 signatures against the closing of the postal sorting office.

"The development is a terrible eyesore, nobody in Wickford wants it.

"We think services should remain local and think of the pressure these type of builds put on traffic, there isn't the infrastructure to cope."