Grazing in the Green Green Grass of Hascombe village!
Funny old world – isn’t it. Highway experts raise all sorts of objections to the dangerous things people do on or near the highway – but when it comes to distractions this has to take the cow pat . And so far the county council has ignored the hazard.
NIL Point – to the Protect Our Waverley Group for angering law abiding motorists braving the challenging fog, rain, ice and all the difficult driving conditions that Winter presents.
The owners of this converted shed – gained planning permission for its conversion into residential use for their – daughter. This was against planning officers’ advice – but now they feel it incumbent upon them to stop development two miles down the road at Dunsfold Airfield , thereby preventing others from the chance of obtaining a home of their own.
Selfish or what – and a Merry Christmas to you too.
Little bit of difference between utilising an existing old building into a needed resource without effect to anyone.
And building a bloody, near town sized dev and it’s associated disruption from now ’till kingdom come!
I think you may have missed our point? Utilising an existing building was extremely important to that family because it provided a much needed home. A new settlement at the airfield will provide that – but many thousands of times over, but equally important for the individual families who will live there. And you may not have heard – there are now plans afoot to open up the Downlink – isn’t that what Mr McAllister proposed in 2008?
Yes he did but it won’t work. It sounds like a good idea but the practicality of undoing Dr Beaching’s work or changing to a tram/busway would mean a single carriageway due to the width constraints and what about the many gardens and other private properties that have made deviants’ to the original route?
A group of us were discussing this very subject over a pub drink last night. We feel sorry for any potential families that will be stuck in this outpost if the development goes ahead. Our late teen kids (and friends) do not want to live there. They can’t wait to get away when they can and experience town or city living. So why bring that environment to rural areas?
If they actually do build a whole bunch of social housing on the site then these will be filled with miss placed families. The rest will be snapped up by wealthy folk and rented out to others that cannot get a mortgage 🙁 – and you cannot mitigate for that!
Oh! you are all so sad and so pessimistic. Everyone in Horsham, Cranleigh and the villages once travelled on the railway to school, college and work – so why not now? As for the homeowners who have encroached on the Downslink – you know what – they will have to give it back to the owners!
As for living in an outpost. that is exactly what Alfold, Dunsfold and many of the villages are – outposts. No schools, pubs closing, and numerous properties merely bolt holes for the green wellie brigade. Please don’t waste your sympathy on the families who will live at Dunsfold Park – they will create their own community – why? because many of them will own/rent a home for the first time in their lives. As for “miss placed” families – perhaps they will have the opportunity to find “a place” and hopefully, will make it something of which everyone in Waverley can be proud.
Perhaps you may not have noticed – but homes for the elderly are also included in the scheme – know of anywhere else that includes the “miss placed” oldies?
am, they will turn out to be empty promises… you’ll see.
And where do you suggest the “green wellie” brigade as you call people who live a rural life go then, find another rural place after they have finished with living in a town… for the the town to follow them again one future ad infinitum.
And if these villages are already outposts, what is wrong with that for the people who choose to get away. Is no rural place sacred from you lot?
You are the sad ones I fear.
Like a lot of people I know, my wife and I moved out to leafy Surrey in the 80s to enjoy living in the countryside and to bring up our children in a non-urban environment. In the natural way of things, many people in their late teens and early twenties move back into towns and cities to experience urban life. And many of those then drift back to their roots eventually.
The large net migration influx into the UK in the last few years, an increase in single person households and increased longevity are driving the need for more housing, and to me it does make sense to use up “brown field” sites like Dunsfold and Hewitts in Cranleigh first, and develop those fully, before encroaching into pristine green fields.
I feel it is really important to deal fully with environmental and infrastructure issues at the same time, and that is something that Waverley Borough Council have not been doing well in recent years. The Planning Officers (I know because I have asked them myself) have had scant regard to environmental pollution issues, and they simply haven’t grappled effectively with the complexities of balancing infrastructure with the need to build more houses in the draft Local Plan.
Waverley Borough Council staff, and especially many of the Borough Councillors themselves, have so many different egotistical and private agenda issues that it has become difficult to get effective agreement and action on environmental and infrastructure issues. So instead, they’ve just been playing the housing numbers game. And we’ve all heard transport people from Surrey County Council saying “yes the traffic is bad and it’s going to get worse, so just get over it”.
Rather than just bitch about all this, I felt I should try and do something instead. So I joined Cranleigh Civic Society over a year ago and, like many others, I’ve put a lot of time into trying to get Waverley to understand and deal with environmental and infrastructure issues. What started out as an acrimonious conflict between Waverley Borough Council and what they saw as a village pressure group has now morphed into a friendly and productive relationship, and I’ve just recently noticed a sea change in the way Planning Officers have started to deal with particularly environmental issues.
So, credit to Waverley’s Planners where it’s due; but there’s still a long way to go.
This is just a personal comment to recent messages I’ve been following on Waverley Web, and it’s not been sent to or endorsed by either Waverley BC or Cranleigh Civic Society, though I hope they would be sympathetic to my views.