Month: March 2016

CRANLEIGH CIVIC SOCIETY

 

Regular readers of the Waverley Web will have seen it has frequently  used articles and photographs from the Cranleigh Civic Society Website.  Along with others  from the Farnham Society and other Community Groups – all of whom are doing everything in they power to protect the areas they serve and which are under threat from development like never before!

If you live in or around Cranleigh support this local group which has worked tirelessly over the past year to protect your interests   join us in wishing the Cranleigh Civic Society and its members a very Happy First Anniversary and every success in everything they do on your behalf in the future!

Cranleigh Civic Society has existed for just over twelve months and it says, “what a year it has been”

 Formed by a group of concerned local people it has gone on to achieve some huge successes and is now  recognised by such high ranking people as Her Majesty’s Planning Inspectorate.

It was actively involved in the Berkeley Homes appeal (425 houses south of Cranleigh High Street. ) It was an official contributor; and its  evidence pack highlighted flooding and sustainability issues was accepted by the Planning Inspector.  It has put the spotlight  on the  flood risk on other development sites, and  discovered biodiversity studies that had been carried out incorrectly. It was applauded by villagers when it  uncovered huge sewage issues that had  been either overlooked, or ignored, and has drawn the attention of decision makers to  the very obvious inability of Cranleigh’s poor road infrastructure to cope.

 It was involved with the Cranleigh Conservation Area Review in the High Street, has and continues to protect the Beryl Harvey allotments and conservation field, the Elmbridge Road Campaign, to name but a few.  The list of its achievements is endless.

 The Society was formed as a direct result of  residents’  distress at the huge number of new homes that Waverley Borough Council indicated it intended   to see built in and around Cranleigh.  This housing is not in response to “local” housing need and is far more than its  fair share of the total number Waverley claims are  required across the borough.

The disproportionate number villagers say they are being told to accept is, it believes,  driven by the  lack of protection from Green Belt and other landscape designations such as AONB (Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty). 

The CCS believes Cranleigh is seen as an easy target with its green fields ripe for picking.

NOT to provide affordable housing in response to local need, but to deliver maximum profits to developers and solve a borough- wide  problem. It is recognised that “housing need” is NOT concentrated in this part of the Borough, however Waverley’s plan is to dump it here anyway!

The CCS says, Waverley is not looking anywhere else in the borough other than Cranleigh and the surrounding area to put thousands  of new houses. 

Since  Berkeley Homes lodged its appeal, NO significant applications have been put forward to the Joint Planning Committee at Waverley.  It appears that Waverley is waiting for the result of that  appeal, expected on or before the 8 April, and which if granted, lets them once again, literally  open the flood gates in and around Cranleigh. 

The minimum number of houses planned by Waverley for Cranleigh village is 1,500, it could be many more.  That’s 3,600 more residents with 3,000 more cars on the roads and a minimum of 6,000 additional traffic movements per day.

Significant developments have already been approved.  Some 58 new homes on the old Swallow Tiles site, 19, Cranleigh Brick & Tile, 125 houses on Amlets Lane, and 149 houses off the Horsham Road.  The Hewitts application for 120 houses is also currently at appeal.  That’s 452 new houses in total, with 274 of these already on green fields. 

Says the Society – Almost every week  even more proposals for development on  green fields are lodged and even schemes mooted on our Green Belt!

If you care about Cranleigh join the Civic Society and help it fight for transparency and fairness for our village.

Help it make a difference

Join The Cranleigh Civc Society Today

http://www.cranleighsociety.org/join-us/

You can also keep up to date with us on Facebook and Twitter:

www.facebook.com/cranleighsociety                              @CranleighSoc

 

 

 

Well there we are then! – The Elmbridge Village Ltd has written to Waverley backing the Knowle Park Initiative’s plans to build 265 houses on the West Cranleigh Nurseries site in Alfold Road, Cranleigh.

The Cloggie who produces salad crops to help feed the nation and who employees local people, wants to ditch food production in favour of house production – and stops at nothing to persuade the locals – including a few of his borough council mates that have called the application in to the JPC. Now he and his fellow cohorts have persuaded the organisation that runs a retirement village to back his plans to ditch the tomatoes to make a few guilders.

Sing-a-long with…Abba…Guilders,Guilders, Guilders.

Did the Company ask the over residents’ before they spoke up for them?  NO! Some of them say they are fuming, as they were not  even consulted by Elmbridge Village Ltd. Formerly Elmbridge Retirement Homes.

Would it have anything to do with the fact, as revealed by one elderly resident of EV in Elmbridge Road, that residents had been offered a path/road/accessway from their homes

…across the fields and the Cranleigh /Waters, …across the former West Cranleigh Nurseries, …across The Alfold Road, …across the Knowle Park, … across Knowle Lane …across the Snoxhall Fields and …acccording to James Puckering on behalf of Elmbridge Village Limited “a safe access into Cranleigh High Street.”Just a few little old miles away.

WWethinks the poor old souls will be in need a cuppa tea and a lie down by the time they get there!

Ye Gods – will the  Flying Dutchman stop at nothing? Perhaps he will offer everyone wings next?

Will he be supplying the residents with motor scooters – we have already heard from a former Cycle Supplier that the devious Dutchman offered to buy dozens of bikes from him, if he supported his cunning development plan.

So perhaps its – get on your bikes girls and boys at the Retirement village, and peddle whilst you piddle through the winter floodwater on your two mile run to the shops! After all back home in Clog Country – they do it all the time.  When the restoration begin on the next stretch of the Wey and Arun Canal- you will even have your own canal to leap over, and it will feel just like Amsterdam!

We have also heard from many other villagers over there  of the coercion that is going on to get the Knowle Park Initiative “home and wet”  before the earth movers get on site to build 125 Cala Homes next door to the Cloggie in Amlets Lane. According to his neighbours and the developer  he is furious that his numerous  offers to buy the land were turned down, and another developer got in first  with permission to build  125 new houses. Getting a development of his very own would help soften the blow! Ah well-that’s life – sh** happens! 

 

Sing-a-long with Our Cilla.

Click here to Read article from Farnham Herald. East street pdf copy

The Waverley Web has been doing a little research to determine  the identity of the  funder  behind the notorious Farnham East Street development, sometimes described by the locals as Farnham’s Nightmare!

Well we may be putting two and two together and making five – but WW believes Waverley Borough Council is joining forces with none other than –  

 

Either on its own or in collaboration with “others” it is believed Surrey County Council  is jumping into bed with… “YOUR WAVERLEY”/Crest Nicholson & Co and Sainsburys’ to get what some Farnham folk are calling – 

‘A VERY SHABBY DEAL FOR THE TOWN’  to finally get off the ground!

Is Surrey County Council really, yes really, the only organisation prepared to join our dodgey local council in the scam of the century called East Street? Well it would appear so…and…

who better to have in the driving seat than the Chairman of Surrey County Council’s Pension Fund, Councillor Denise Le Gal, Waverley Borough Councillor for Farnham Hale and Heath End,  Surrey County Councillor for Farnham North. She is also Chairman of SW Surrey Conservative Association, which  in its spare time runs Waverley!

 Her Deputy is Councillor Alan Young the Surrey County Councillor for Cranleigh and Ewhurst, currently turning up in Farnham saying he  is – “doing a little local networking.” We bet he is! Been doing quite a bit of that lately so much so that rumour has it that Guildford Conservative Association is doing its utmost to kick him out!  Not to be outwitted  he is looking to take up his wife’s SCC seat as the member for the Waverley Eastern Villages, in the neighbouring Constituency.  With a fine reputation for holding secret meetings with developers’ over there, coming over here to Farnham should suit him down to the ground!

As for Councillor Le Gal, as the current WBC councillor  for,  Farnham Hale & Heath End  we have peeped  into her  attendance record, which is not exactly something to boast about!

From 28/09/15 to 22/03/16 – she had a 70% absence rate.

How’s that for a record of service to your electorate? How much of this time did she spend instead playing with investments in the SCC Pension Fund, as its Chairman? 

In February 2014, yes two years ago,  Waverley  Council said the East Street scheme was fully funded and shovel ready!  However, since then   – all has been quiet on the Western Front! Now numerous new what it claims are, “minor revisions” to planning applications have been lodged, and there are  very serious concerns about their legality (Read the Farnham Herald article above.)  Farnham residents are now  calling  for a Judicial Review. Wow – that really would put the cat among the pigeons – or the Tom Tits – (new deputy leader Tom Martin) and his new lady  in waiting – Gone to – Potts?

Perhaps the time has now come for Farnham Town Council to stand up and be counted and seek  its own legal advice before it is too late. After all if it doesn’t, what exactly is it there for?

Pity really that it is full of Waverley Borough Councillors . When  will the electorate of our towns and villages learn! No checks, no balances, no democracy!

However its Mayor Waverley Borough Councillor Pat the Jack Frost, has told everyone it is a matter for Waverley Borough Council and not Farnham Town Council – so in other words but out of our affairs –  arrogant or what!

So there you are then – Surrey County Council knows a good deal when it sees one…doesn’t it?

Always happy to hear confirmation or a denial of this post from either Waverley BC or SCC here: 

But WW is not holding its breath!

 

 

There we were – Oh Waverley Web of little faith! – thinking that yet another Green Field in the East of the borough over there in Ewhurst was about to bite the dust – and then, would you Adam and Eve it… it was REFUSED by 16 votes to two – by Waverley’s Joint Planning committee.

After the severe drubbing it was given for approving 51 houses on a green field in the little village of Alfold just two weeks ago, it would have been a brave, a very brave, committee to have incurred the wrath of  Ewhurst people too.

Sing along with Mary – a campaigner against building on green fields.

 In the face of strong support from  WBC planning officers’ led by its newly appointed  Chief Planning Officer Elizabeth Sims. (Shame on you Liz, and you in your  first week in your new job, and your colleagues, all  determined to see another green field go under concrete – doesn’t say much for the boroughs future under your leadership does it?)

However, there  were no holds barred when  Miller Homes’ application to build on fields behind Backward Point, Cranleigh Road, Ewhurst, went before the committee last night!

Almost to a man and a woman, councillors came out  guns a’ablazing to oppose the development. Despite officers’   advice that it was a “sustainable site” close to the village, with good transport links, and advice from Surrey County Council Highways “experts,” that the access onto the Cranleigh Road and the access road to the site behind were safe.

This was rubbished by almost everyone – including Bypass Byham (Con, Bramley,) who only a couple of weeks earlier was perfectly happy to grant 51 homes on the dangerous Loxwood Road, in Alfold adjacent to a dangerous bend where a ~Loxwood family, including two children, died!  Where there is no school, no transport links, and not much of anything really!

He called the Ewhurst access,  “bizarre,” and the Cranleigh HGV expert Stewart Stennett sited  a dozen reasons why the access would not work. “If a refuse truck travelling  from Cranleigh had to drive into that access road it could not do so without crossing to the other side of the road, which it must not do” he warned his colleagues.

Councillor Mary Foryweski (Con Cranleigh East) said the scheme was,

Unimaginative, SHE doubted whether it was viable, the density was too high on yet “another” green field, that would urbanise a lovely village. “I know some of us are getting a bit of a reputation for being anti-development, but we are not, but we are constantly faced with this type of  boring development on green fields and it is becoming very – “BORING”

Councillor Carole Cockburn (Con Farnham) agreed. “Ewhurst is a beautiful village and urbanisation is the one thing this  pretty village just does not need.” To build on this tranquil site would be a step too far.” 

The local member Councillor Val Henry said – building on a Green Lung adjacent to the Ewhurst Recreation Ground would be wrong. The density – twice that of surrounding properties – was too high, the access unsuitable, and the roads within the development too narrow. Others echoed her concerns, and took issue with the Highway Authority’s support for the scheme. However, they were warned by Officer Sims – not to challenge the opinion of the experts! 

Others claimed that a similar – but much smaller application for 13 houses on the same site had been recommended for refusal by officers, and councillors claimed the advice they were now being given was,  “inconsistent.”

So…the desecration of a green field site has been avoided … but for how long? With no Daft Local Plan, a new Chief Planning Officer determined to support development on green fields, even though the application was introduced by an officer saying it was the Council’s “strongly ” preferred policy that future housing should be built on brown field sites rather than green fields, – they then proceeded to recommend approval!  Why! Because WBC’s cannot demonstrate that it has  a five year land supply!

Well! Get one then! – on all the brownfield sites you have that you have in Waverley Ms Sims – or you will have more than angry folk here in Farnham in the West and Cranleigh in the East to contend with!

 

 

 

 

LET’S HOPE THEY HAVE BETTER  LUCK IN EWHURST THAN THEY DID IN ALFOLD?

Following the unpopular decision by Waverley’s Joint Planning Committee to grant permission for 55 houses in Alfold just a week ago…

…read hereTen out of Ten for Trying Councillor Deanus!

TONIGHT,Tuesday, the very same committee will be considering an application by Millbrook Homes for 31 homes on a green field site behind  Backward Point, Cranleigh Road, Ewhurst.

Well there you are then  – if you cannot be bothered to read all the reasons why Waverley Council want another green field to be  built on and why the officers’  have made a recommendation to councillors that it should be approved  – here they are in a nutshell :

• No objection from WBC planning “experts” because they have No Local Plan and No five year housing land supply.
• No objection from Surrey County Council’s Highway Authority!
• No objection from Thames Water – despite there being a very real problem at the Cranleigh Sewerage Works.
• No objection from a variety of other statutory agencies.
• No Objection from the Environmental Health Dept of WBC.

However…

There is plenty of objection from the Locals almost 90 at publication of this post – including the village leaders at Ewhurst Parish Council. This is what it said…

 

However the bungs from the developers’ are as follows:

So there you are then … Officers’ recommendation to grant permission, backed by the highway authority – here are the people you need to write to …and quick! Otherwise another green field could bite the dust?