Who Decides What Happens on the Dengie?

This is the Dengie
This is our home
What happens here
shapes our future

But who decides what happens here?

Public consultation is coming on a new local plan for Maldon District

The council says the plan will help decide where homes, jobs and services go.

But more and more decisions about the Dengie aren’t being made in Maldon District

Mandatory national housing targets
big housing developers moving in
land speculators cashing in
our towns and villages are being reshaped
without our involvement

Now we also face energy projects so big
the government decides them, not the council,
with the power to buy our land compulsorily

The last few years have brought plans
for a nuclear power station
a towering on-shore wind farm
and now a massive solar park
and they come with plans for
new roads through the countryside
new transmission lines over the fields

Layer them on top of each other, and see the scale.

The question isn’t whether we play our part in the energy transition. It’s whether we have any say in how.

We get consultations
but do we really participate
in the decision making process?

Over the years we have had a series of reactive campaigns
with recurring negative words in their name:

No

Against

Opposition

What we haven’t had is: Proposition

We need our own vision for the Dengie

There’s an opportunity to combine renewable energy with community ownership, food production, rewilding and better access to the land. Energy co-ops. Community land trusts. Solar panels with sheep grazing beneath. Farms that work with nature, not against it.

We need our own answers to the important questions:

How do we house, power and feed ourselves?
Where are our children going to live? Do these fields actually feed us?
How do we keep our rivers clean, our water supply secure, and nature flourishing?

And how do we thrive without wrecking the climate?

If you want to be part of a plan for a better Dengie

Get involved.

You may have a local group fighting against new housing or demanding that new infrastructure comes first. You may be in an environmental group like the Dengie Climate Action Partnership. That’s good – find the others with the same concerns as you.

Splintered opposition groups have a ceiling on what they can achieve though, they risk duplicating efforts, making the same mistakes and not learning together- if we want to shape the future of the Dengie then we need to work together, with a vision of the future we want.

If you have the same idea and want to help make this happen – get in touch