Watch out there are Berkeley Bunnies about … and they’re preparing to burrow into Cranleigh!!
Look away now if the sight of felled trees upsets you. One of our followers over there in the East was so upset she had to drive straight home and have a cup of tea and a lie-down!
She said:
“On a trip to M&S Cranleigh yesterday, I was shocked to my toes to note that the massacre of the rain forests has come to Cranleigh! Men were at work cutting down trees in the field opposite the Snoxhall Playing fields.You simply would not believe the slaughter! Log piles were stacked up making the field looking like a logger’s yard! Unfortunately, there was traffic behind me so all I could do was drive on shocked to my toes by the desecration.”
Oh Dear! and we can hardly bear to tell Conflummoxed of Cranleigh that she ain’t seen nothing yet! There’s more to come and soon it will be the Ancient Woodland that bites the dust! 
But don’t you worry your little heads about it because when Waverley’s Head Planning Honcho was recommending approval of the scheme she told concerned councillors not to worry that ancient woodland was under threat. Liz the Biz Sims said:
“Well, they can always be replanted somewhere else.”
And there were us, dummies, thinking that it took 600 years for woodland to be designated as ancient – when all the time it is perfectly obvious to us all that trees can get ancient in just a few months/years. Wow!
Although councillors refused the scheme, Berkeleys appealed and it was allowed by a Government inspector following an extremely weak defence from “Your Tory controlled Waverley.”
So when a bit more of Cranleigh’s green and pleasant land and its country lanes start to look like just another outer London suburb – remember “people need homes!”
However, we thought the Berkeley Bunnies weren’t allowed to start burrowing, big time until the 278 Highways agreement for the access into Knowle Lane had been signed off? and … we thought the planners had to deal with other little matters like…following the conditions that came with the Inspector’s decision at Appeal when he said – all the homes – including the “affordable homes” must be built at the same time. All 425 of them, and not just 50 odd big expensive burrows for the London crowd!
But perhaps with a start date just a few months away and marketing to begin this time next year – the bunnies are eager to get the burrow under-way on the site Cranleigh townsfolk are now calling” Cranleigh’s Very own Watership Down!” Please note the height of the development – so Berkely Bunnies don’t flood in future, but everyone else does.
Now there’s a new estate name for you Cranleigh Parish Council. – After all, isn’t this site known locally as well recognised flood plain?
I have just looked at the meeting schedule to deal with the application to alter what was granted in the appeal, in other words that they build all the houses at the same time not just cherry pick the expensive ones, surprise surprise the recommendation by the planning officers is that this be granted, that yet again the big developers just do what they want, walk all over everyone and no one in the planning dept of Waverley have the backbone to say NO, I do wonder why. Perhaps I will put planning in to build a bungalow in my garden and then change my mind and build a house, I bet they wouldn’t like that and I wouldn’t get away with it! I was driving around various parts of Cranleigh last week, knowle lane large earth lorrys had to stop on verge to get past, Amlets Lane same problem and Horsham road best ever, ten minutes waiting while they tried to reverse a large lorry up a small track, my suggestion to the worker directing ” get smaller lorrys or drivers that can drive”. This only the start!t won’t get any better