A DEVELOPER could be allowed to drop his promise to help provide a community with a new post office as part of the conditions for building 68 flats on green belt land.

In 2009 residents battled to prevent developer Graham Cox building the flats on the site of Jennikings Garden Centre in Manor Road, Chigwell, claiming that it would scar green belt land and that there would be a huge and unsustainable increase in traffic.

Councillors approved the plans, but only on condition that the developer make 80 per cent of the development in to affordable housing and provide money towards the long-awaited re-opening the Post Office in Manor Road, which was closed down three years ago.

In March the story took another turn when council officers recommended the plans be rejected after Mr Cox failed to keep to the conditions set.

However council officers are now recommending that the development be approved, arguing that the urgent need for new affordable housing in the area warranted the promise to contribute to a new-post office being dropped.

Rajandra Patel, 59, owns Regency News which the post office was located in and lives in Manor Road.

He said: “I am very disappointed because this stretch of shops is dying without the post office and it was here for 25 years.

“We have people come and ask about it all of the time.”

He said that the post office was one of few on the route from Romford to the West End and was often used by commuters, bringing the row of shops a regular stream of passing trade.

Barry Fleetwood, 65, lived in Grange Crescent, close to site of the development for years, but recently moved because he did not want to live close to the new flats.

He said: “The promise to provide a post office was a major plank of the campaign to allow these flats to be built on green belt land. The developer should not be allowed to drop it.”

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