Listen to Crazy Frog to get in the mood for – The Final Countdown. [/audio
It is now almost a year since a planning application for 1,800 homes was submitted by Dunsfold Airport to build a new community on a brownfield site on the Surrey/Sussex border!
A Borough-wide Consultation, has followed a borough-wide Consultation followed by, yes you guessed it, yet another borough- wide Consultation! …
It’s a bit like the third runway at Heathrow… but no surprises there when you think about it because Dunsfold Park has a runway or two!
The Applicant has stayed pretty shtum this time round, responding only when poked, prodded and provoked into doing so. Which is quite unlike the Flying Scotsman we have come to know and …. well, yeah, we know he’s not exactly beloved locally. Funny that, developers, estate agents and the tax man, they’re all social pariahs! Looked down on by others who feel superior because they earn their living doing something else.
Why is that? After all, we all need someone to build the houses we want and need to live in, someone to buy and sell those houses for us and, much as we hate to admit it, someone has to collect the taxes we all begrudge paying. Yes, they’re dirty jobs but someone has to do it or we’d be up S**t Creek!
We at Waverley Web are getting a bit tired of being accused of flying the flag for the Flying Scot. We’ve said it before but we’ll say it again, the Waverley Web has no affiliation to any developers, all we care about – and we really, really, really, really do care passionately about it – is that development happens in the right place: not on our precious, ever diminishing green fields but on brown fields, like, yeah, you guessed it, Dunsfold Park. If anyone out there can show us a bigger or better brown field, ripe for development we’re all ears!
Unlike PoW and its supporters, we care passionately about the future of the ENTIRE borough not just one little corner of it which is why we say:
Even one of our local MPs, JeremyHunt, has come out in somewhat begrudging favour – saying the world is a different place now to what it was when he led the anti-campaign back in 2009. OK, you know he didn’t lead it and we know he didn’t lead it – was led by the nose by Stop Dunsfold Park New Town more like – but he’s a politician and, as we all know, they have very selective memories.
Another long standing opponent, Anne Milton MP, has stayed shtum, because she’s stuck between a rock and a hard place! Mrs Milton, who has made no secret of her opposition to Dunsfold Park in the past, has the misfortune to have a foot in two camps – her constituency covers both Guildford and Waverley and, in development terms, Guildford is even more constrained than Waverley.
In Waverley she’s being lobbied by residents bedeviled by sewage and flooding problems and in Guildford they make no secret of the fact that they think Waverley should take some of their housing allocation! The former Nurse, our very own Florence Nightingale, has let it be known she’s ‘worried sick’ and doesn’t know if she’s on her head or her heels as she rushes around her ward taking the local temperature at regular intervals.
So where are we?
- We have towns like – Farnham, Godalming and Haslemere – calling for even more development at Dunsfold Airport.
- We have had the villages of Alfold, Bramley, Chiddingfold, Dunsfold and Hascombe plastering anti-Dunsfold New Town propaganda far and wide; not to mention the Bramley-Babes throwing themselves in front of cars on the A281 persuading every Tom, Dick and Harriet commuting between Horsham and Guildford to object to development at Dunsfold Park in order to Save Our Children, Stop Pollution, Stop HGVs, etc, etc, etc, tick whichever box on a postcard that most appeals, or, better still, tick every box! It’s a multiple choice bonanza that ensures PoW wins every time.
Funny that PoW has no problem with or objection to the massive building programme going on just across the border in Horsham, nor the Amlets Lane, Crest Nicholson, Berkeley Homes and Knowle Park Initiative developments in Cranleigh. It appears all they care about is stopping development at Dunsfold. Could it be that it’s not actually about the development but about the developer?
Is it because he’s a Scot? Surely not, that would be racist and PoW never breaks the law … Or is it because he might make a lot of money out of building houses? Surely not … PoW supporters are some of the biggest earners in the county – or so we’ve been told by a Mole!
But, whatever it is, people just need to get over it! And the Joint Planning Committee needs to get into the Council Chamber – all of them, not just the measly minority that have been turning out in recent months – the whole damned lot. And if those Cranleigh Councillors who have been sunning themselves down under can’t be bothered to pack their bags and come home, they can send their resignations on a postcard because this is one occasion when we really wish they were here – doing the job they signed up for!!!
