And there we were thinking all was sweetness and light at Waverley HQ.
Councillors are so busy blaming everyone for not getting a Local Plan in place that we decided to list them as a quick reference guide.
Here are the credits:
- The Council’s Planning Officers
- The Chief Executive – Tell everyone to work seven days a week said ‘Taffy’ Edwards
- Surrey County Council – Highways department for not getting its Transport Plan in place
- Natural England – Habitats Report
- The Government – for updating it planning policy guidance notes frequently and moving the goal posts!
- Guildford and Woking Borough Councils – for rushing its work on the Strategic Housing Assessment (SHLA) – the number of homes that are required in the three adjoining borough’s
- Developers – for swamping it with a load of planning applications
- Developers – who insist on going to appeal against WBC’s decisions
- The Public Consultation Exercise – some believe 4,000 of whom came to the wrong conclusion, because more than 80% wanted development on previously developed land
- Waverley residents – who did not respond to the Public Consultation Exercise. Some councillors want another one – we don’t know how much the first one cost yet!
- The Liberal Democrats – when they were there – eight years ago!
- Dunsfold Park – for not putting in a planning application
- The Government Inspector – for just being born!
- The weather – because in 2013/14, parts of the borough flooded – particularly Cranleigh where they want to build.
- The Council offices’ cat – who couldn’t catch the rats?
- Last, but definitely not least… each other
Alfold Councillor, Kevin Deans, when referring to the largest brownfield site in the borough at Dunsfold Park said that when the Public Consultation Exercise was held (have we seen the results yet?), that it was the NIMBY’s elsewhere in the borough who wanted to dump on Dunsfold and the exercise did not represent the views of everyone in the borough.
No Cllr Deanus, what most Waverley residents have said repeatedly is: “Build on our brown fields before building on our green fields and don’t build on sites that flood.” Have you got it yet?
