UPDATE TO MEL'S PETITION FOR UPGRADE TO ASDA ZEBRA CROSSING I was invited to attend the South Woodham Ferrers virtual meeting of the Environment Committee on 23rd February.  The upgrade to the crossing was on the agenda and our Town Councillors agreed that the Town Council support the petition sent to Essex County Council to upgrade the zebra crossing and to contact Councillor Massey by letter to inform him of our support and ask for this to be an item for Essex Highways Panel to consider going forward. I also watched the recording of the Chelmsford City Council Cabinet Meeting on 2nd March where the Masterplan for Land North of South Woodham Ferrers was submitted and approved.  Although there are no planning applications in yet for the housing the Masterplan encourages the developers to bring a Street feel to the B1012 with housing fronting the road.  It is envisaged the B1012 will be subject to a new 40mph speed limit with consideration to further reduce to 30mph.  To encourage coherence between the new development and the existing town there will be 6 pedestrian crossings and further roundabouts between Shaw Farm roundabout and the Hamberts Road roundabout.  During peak travel times this will make Ferrers Road a rat run to avoid congestion on the Burnham Road potentially making the Asda crossing more dangerous. The next Essex Highways Panel meeting is on 18th March but there is no agenda published and the meetings are not open to the public (even in non Covid times) so I can only hope we are in time for this meeting.  The Chair of the panel is Cllr Bob Massey so hopefully we will get a positive result. It's not too late to sign the petition, search crossing petition on the South Woodham Ferrers facebook page.  The document supporting it can be found on the swfcta.org website under this link swfcta.org/news.  On this website you can also find out more about us.  We can be contacted at info@swfcta. **Jill Winn**