As if Cranleigh hasn’t enough to worry about – here comes
another developer keen to – “meet Cranleigh’s housing need.” Where are all the cars generated by the proposed development spewing out onto? Yes – you guessed Elmbridge, an area under siege from wannabe developers and which much of the time is under water!
As WW speaks The Environmental Agency is shoving out flood warnings for the Cranleigh area’s Cranleigh Waters along with those for Bramley/Wonersh/Shamley Green and the River Wey’s Godalming/Guildford areas.
Berkeley Homes want to access 360 of the 425 homes it wants to build onto Alfold Rd (pop along there soon and you might find yourself wading into Elmbridge Road.) The very same area where the Knowle Park Initiative’s 265 houses could soon be plonked or could it be dunked! Just a few hundred yards away Cozens-Smith 75. =(690) homes. Say two cars per home = approx 1,400 cars.
An average of five trips per day per household would give you – 7,000 movements, without the Columbia Threadneedle’s latest appeal to add another 120 on the Hewitts Industrial Estate (a brown field site,) making 800 new homes within yards of each other. Approx 7,600 traffic movements in total
These cars will pile onto the A281 over the notoriously dangerous Wey and Canal bridge. The bridge pictured here below immediately adjacent to Cranleigh Waters where to-day there is another flood warning in place and where homes flooded in 2013/14.
The picture was taken by a Cranleigh follower of WW when chaos ensued on Elmbridge Road, a notorious single road accident black spot on, ‘Just another Manic Monday’ last October. A bit like to-day really
Locals tell us they would prefer these 120 additional homes built on a scruffy former industrial brownfield site that has never flooded, rather than on green fields that flood elsewhere. read http://waverleyweb.org/2016/01/25/
You will see that is not the only problem in the area of Elmbridge – once referred to by one Cranleigh Parish Councillor as – “the wrong side of the tracks.” The old railway brige over the Downslink in Elmbridge is also cracking up!
So if the road network doesn’t slow you down the floodwater will!