This land is behind my property (it backs on to 12 properties in Chapel Road), so I am well-versed with its specific problems.

Like most of Hainford in general - and indeed all of the sites put forward under this document - it suffers from a very high water table. Even during the summer, a few days of moderately heavy rain will cause areas of pooling water to appear, and during most winters a number of significant areas will be totally under water, and may be so for weeks at a time. This land is in places higher than the surrounding properties, and this water then causes major flooding in the gardens. Should this land be built on, the reduction in soakaway area will cause even more flooding in the nearby gardens, to an extent that will make them totally untenable.

When a number of people in Chapel Road had the opportunity to purchase some 80 feet of extension to their back gardens from the then landowner of this parcel of land back in 2010, Broadland District Council advised us that it was classified as 'Agricultural' and therefore no building would be permitted on it. This applies as much to our back gardens (presently somewhat under water) as well as the rump of the land, and I trust that no exception will be made just because it is a large piece of land that someone might feel is 'ripe for development'.

As a general comment covering all of the presently proposed sites in Hainford, most all of the services - water and sewage, electricity, and telephone/Broadband - are straining at the limits of their capacity. Flooding - including from the sewage system - is a not uncommon problem in the village although Anglian Water are clearly not prepared to spend money increasing the system's capacity (apparently two contractors installing mains sewage in Hainford many years ago both went into liquidation whilst carrying out the works). Unscheduled power outages are not infrequent - we probably have at least three or four a year. Our road links in and out of the village are for the most part narrow and in most cases winding roads, and all are limited to 30 mph at some point in linking to the 'outside world' although speeding is a continuing problem, and with little of the village having pavements there is a significant risk to 'life and limb' at even existing levels of road usage. There are no street lights anywhere in the village (although most of us would probably not want them - we live 'out in the country' and one of the joys of this is to see a darkened night sky), and even if there were there is little to walk out to: we have NO shops, NO Post Office, just one pub (at the moment) at one end of the village, and one Village Hall. We do not even have a telephone box with a telephone any longer! Public transport is almost non-existent, with an infrequent and irregular bus service that does not provide sufficient service times to allow commuting into Norwich, and they would be reluctant to increase the frequency and hours covered due to insufficient business and - more to the point - the narrow, winding and undulating roads accessing the main roads. Therefore - if you want to live in Hainford - you need your own transport. As current development policy is that housing developments should be in locations that have good public transport links, any proposal for mass building development - such as the ones set out in this Proposals document for Hainford - fail at this hurdle alone.