Green spaces are gone, now flats tower over us
Echo letters page, 18 March 2010

I AM sure Kerry Dolan's comments (March 15) are true to most Wickford residents.
   I moved to the area more than ten years ago to escape the living conditions caused my my previous council's "regeneration" projects, which resulted in more new homes than could be accommodated, but no additions to cope with the extra residents.
   The strain on parking, commuter overcrowding, deterioration of the standard of street care and crumbling road surfaces caused by the extra traffic left the area looking awful. Hence pride was lost as were standards and along came graffiti, broken windows and no-go areas.
   The overcrowding and lack of services required to keep up standards made it a place I did not want to raise my children, so I took two jobs, saved for eight years and moved to Wickford.
It had green space, clean streets, community spirit, a decent high street, not a block of flats in sight (heaven) and side-streets you could actually park in.
   How things have changed in ten years. Gone are the green spaces, getting more jammed by the year and not a pin can be put between the commuters' cars parked in residential streets and, most upsetting, blocks of flats now towering over our gardens, parks and paths.
   When Basildon Council recognises Wickford as a town in it's own right "and not part of Basildon, then maybe we will get some things for our residents like a cinema for pur children and a pedestrianised High Street, but until then I feel it will only go down and down and down.
KAREN SQUIRES
Azalea Avenue Wickford

...KERRY Dolan (March 12) is spot on in saying Wickford town centre needs revitalisation, not some grandiose plan built on a financial house of cards.
   The grand plan was always unpopular, despite the spin. It was over-development and is now exposed as a local tax-generating scheme.
   Now we are left with hundreds of new flats with no amenities to service them. We now need a more cost-effective and inspired thinking plan to regenerate our town centre, but where will the money come from?
   The hundreds of new citizens inhabiting the flats already built as well as the thousand of older Wickford citizens?
   Where does all this Wickford revenue go? Not on our part of Basildon district council that's for sure.
   It is time Wickford became master of its own destiny and we decide where in our town our money goes.
P SQUIRES
Azalea Avenue, Wickford