During the 2015 elections many of “Your Waverley”s” voting fodder were repeatedly told by prospective borough councillors that the Green Belt was… safe in their hands!
Well is it? You know the stuff that you shovel up in farmyards, and from stable floors – they were feeding it to us in shovelfuls and some of us actually believed them.
Well Godalming has had a a bit of a shock and so have a few other towns and villages. Some councillors were even dumb enough to stand up for a picture opportunity, claiming that the countryside and more particularly the Green Belt was “safe in their hands.”
We now know different…don’t we?
In fact… one pair of Cranleigh councillors pictured below have just bagged themselves a valuable planning permission on their own Green Belt site in Guildford Road, Cranleigh! The same duo, aided and abetted by the Ellis duo have also voted for another piece of Green Belt land to be turned into a nice little earner for “Your Waverley” when it agreed (behind closed doors… again) to join forces with a local developer using £1m of “your money”!
When is the public going to wake up to what is going on – probably when the bulldozers move in on them personally!
Because the Daft Local Plan has nibbled away at various bits of the once hallowed Green Belt and the earth movers will be in there before we can say – Brian Adams; or Julia Potts.
What a difference a year makes. The Waverley Conservative Group hit the streets running. They pledged to retain all our exiting green belt boundaries – and were endorsed by our local MP’s Anne Milton and Jeremy Hunt. God Bless them.
In the article above taken from a Tory Propaganda Rag , Anne Milton even says “I think we need a hundred or so more affordable houses in Cranleigh on brown field sites, but no more.” Whilst at the same time she had made it widely known that she opposes development at Dunsfold Park. Forgive us Ms Milton have you have now changed your mind, because it happens quite a lot around here!
By the way, what happened to that register of brown field sites Waverley trumpeted about – has that been completed and published?
Along with most people in our borough, we at the Waverley Web believe Conservative councillors should honour their pledge – or get out, so that we can get some honourable people that can make a promise and keep to it. Someone we can actually believe in, to represent us and speak up on our behalf.
You have hit the jackpot with this sentence “When is the public going to wake up to what is going on – probably when the bulldozers move in on them personally!”.
So many Cranleigh folk believe that this devastation of our green fields does not affect them as they will not be next door to any of the building sites. How wrong they are.
The whole place will be a mess for years when the construction traffic rumbles through the village and surrounding lanes. How the lanes will cope is anyone’s guess – Surrey County Council Highways seem to find it difficult to cope with one building site let alone half a dozen or more simultaneously. They will probably finish up totally destroyed by the heavy traffic – where have I heard that one before.
The residents have been warned that Cranleigh will be in gridlock with double the number of cars trying to use the unimproved road system. Parking in the village will be hopelessly inadequate, waiting times to see your doctor (and thus your medical condition when seen) will suffer.
The planning system within Waverley is a result of disastrously incompetent management at County and Borough level and, until recently, Parish level. It makes you wonder why virtually all of the proposed developments are recommended for approval even though they require overriding exceptional circumstances in order to do so. Thankfully the new Parish Council is at last standing up to the developers but as they are largely advisory it may be wishful thinking to expect Waverley to heed their comments.
Someone, somewhere, somehow needs to mobilise the apathetic element within Cranleigh to let their displeasure be known. Any suggestions?
The Waverley Web crew agree with your sentiments, particularly this sentence: “Someone, somewhere, somehow needs to mobilise the apathetic element within Cranleigh (and we think this should apply to other towns and villages in Waverley) to let their displeasure be known.”
Well, Cranleigh man we are doing our best, but realise we must do more than our best. You have given us food for thought. Thank you. WW