If you can bear it cry  along… with Roy Orbison 

Brownfield development – v – greenfield development?

But it would appear The Protect Our Waverley Group only cares about… Stopping development on a brownfield site at DUNSFOLD Park and to hell with the countryside!

http://www.cranleighsociety.org/2016/07/20/residents-demonstrate-against-waverley-local-plan

The people of Cranleigh and the surrounding villages left Waverley councillors in no doubt  how strongly they feel about its Daft Local Plan. However whether the borough bods will take any notice of strong opposition to its  blueprint for future housing is something else? WW doubts it!

Due to its crass stupidity and its three past failures to come up with a creditable Local Plan for the  borough, the floodgates have already opened and the developers are pouring in.

Planning applications are stacked up to The Burys ceilings with officers sweating buckets in unsafe working conditions in rising temperatures as they trawl through millions of pages of pending planning applications. As sweat drips from their brows they come up with recommendations to GRANT … with monotonous regularity.

Over 100 people turned out on Tuesday with their placards, loud hailers and shouted their protest as councillors ran the gauntlet of the noisy crowd.  Councillors  waded through protestors  on their way to the council chamber to give their blessing to the Daft Local Plan before its goes out to a six week “public consultation.”

The Daft Plan – that unbelievably, goes out during the silly season when half the borough is on holiday – and the other half don’t  understand  how to influence it!                      Clever old Waverley! Good timing or what?

 Cranleigh councillors Stewart & Jeannette Stennett fresh from their own planning success to build on the Green Belt on their property  were booed into the borough hall. Where were the other Cranleigh borough councillors? – You know the ones who have been holding “secret meetings” with developers for two years… yes… you got it… on holiday! Well they would wouldn’t they, Councillors Brian and Patricia Ellis, of the promoters of the “lets have more footfall in the Cranleigh shops,” variety!”

Cranleigh’s stalwart Councillor Mary Foryszewki claimed there’d been a complete lack of consultation with the Cranleigh Parish Council, of which she happens to chair. It had had no say in the strategic sites chosen for future development. Surprise, surprise! Why? Because all its councillors were in those “secret meetings,” and having done their worst – baled out of their parish seats just a year after being elected!

Some councillors actually had the audacity to say “development would not happen overnight” when everyone knows that development is heavily weighted towards the first five years of the plan and over 850 have already been granted permission in the East of the borough – all of which are in the countryside and where it is forecast that 5,000 homes of the 9,861 will be delivered, leaving Farnham to take the rest.

Some claimed the LP is “a living document” what’s that supposed to mean? Living breathing, has a pulse… or …

that it will be changed – because of the lack of infrastructure, lack of sewage capacity, and water quality? After all, most of the developments in the countryside have already been given the green light – those that haven’t are either at appeal or they are the very brown field (previously developed sites) that the Government is urging local authorities to develop first! Does anyone at Waverley Towers read the Government’s planning guidance notes?

The shocking revelation that this figure could increase to over 12,000 if Woking cannot meet their housing allocation numbers, with  adjoining boroughs  absorbing the shortfall,  met with a groan from protestors. 

But fear not Cranleigh and Farnham you have old Potty Ones sympathy, which should comfort you all…  well does  it?

Council Leader, Julia Potts said that Waverley was a unique borough with large areas of green belt and AONB (Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty) providing protection for most of the borough with the exception of the East and West. She expressed sympathy towards Cranleigh and Farnham that were taking the bulk of development, but basically said  there was no where else to put the housing. Oh woe, woe and double woe! Her sympathy brings tears to your eyes, does’t it!

This completely  contradicts her previous statement on 2 Oct 2015 – “The most important thing is that any new homes are built in the right places and that the council works with Waverley residents to ensure it has the right strategy in place to meet our community’s needs over the coming years.”

Nothing new to us over here in Farnham – she does it all the time!

Come on  Pott’s we  challenge you.  Come to Farnham – go to Cranleigh – and tell the public to their faces what you intend to bring down upon their heads… go on we dare you?