CRANLEIGH NEW TOWN HAS ARRIVED

“SOD GROWING LETTUCES WHO NEEDS FOOD WHEN YOU CAN GROW MONEY” – BUNNIES EAT LETTUCE AND IF THUMPER NEXT DOOR CAN GET 425 THEN I CAN GET 265!”

Here at the Waverley Web we couldn’t decide whether the music to accompany the latest deluge of houses to be dumped on Cranleigh should be – Rubber Ball, or In Out, In Out and Shake it All about, BUT FINALLY  WE DECIDED IT HAD TO BE ‘ANOTHER ONE BITES THE DUST’

– AS THE PLANNERS RIDE ROUGHSHOD OVER  “POOR OLD CRANLEIGH”

 The Knowle Park Initiative, West Cranleigh Nurseries, AKA A2 Dominion, AKA Nicholas Vrijland’s application for 265 dwellings in ELMBRIDGE has been bouncing in and out of Waverley for more than ten  years. Just goes to show if you hang on in there shoving it in and out,  you can bore your way into VICTORY!

As we predicted an approval was a foregone conclusion – because “Your Waverly has decided that Cranleigh New Town is-a-coming – whether they, the villagers over there in the East, like it or not!  Well after all Cranleigh –  ‘Your Waverley’ has given away our Farnham Town to developers so what chance your village?

Once again here at the Waverley Web – our flabber is absolutely ghasted! 

Chief Planning Honcho Liz The Biz Sims forged ahead like a steamroller over  fresh tarmac as she almost  beat members of ‘Your Waverley” into submission in her efforts to get another shedload of houses onto the Cranleigh flood plains. Is she actually employed by the developers?- because she was so determined that application would go through COME HELL OR HIGH WATER! How much more partisan can you get?  Can anyone out there remember the days when planning officers ADVISED councillors not HORSEWHIPPED THEM?  Shouldn’t someone should be reining her in?
So the final vote was 8 For – 8 Against with Peter  Isherwood chairman’s casting vote in favour clinching the deal. Has he ever opposed anything?  

What we want to know is?   Why did six members absent themselves from such an important meeting. Cranleigh’s  Stennetts have good reason ‘a pecuniary interest’ in the application, but why did Mike Band,(not that he turns up for any contentious applications) Pat Frost, Stephen Hill, Stephen Mulliner, and David Hunter not turn up?  We accuse them of cowardliness and not wanting to vote on a very unpopular application, (although A Touch of,  Pat Frost doesn’t usually care how  unpopular she is!)

Liz Townsend and Mary Foryszewski were forceful, coherent and factual in their declarations, as were the Cranleigh Civic Society  spokesman and the Cranleigh Parish Councillor, all to no avail. It wasn’t for the want of trying that they failed in their futile but passionate attempts to make the planners take Cranleigh’s issues seriously. 

 In one  valiant effort after another Councillor Mary Foryszewski  did her damndest to parry Liz the Biz’s blows. – Where was  the Cranleigh Representation? The Stennett Duo again,  or the mealy-mouthed Ellis who together with her late departed  husband worked tirelessly to get the application called in more times than balls bounce at Wimbledon! Couldn’t she have filled in for an absent colleague to support the one lone Cranleigh vote in the stinking Chamber Pot that has become – ‘Your Waverley.’  Cowardly or what!

Questions must surely be asked why the late Brian Ellis’s  seat on the JPC has not been filled by another Cranleigh Councillor – it is quite obvious to everyone in Cranleigh – that Elizabeth Townsend has been prevented from taking her rightful place? She was allowed to speak But NOT VOTE – WHY? CRANLEIGH PEOPLE DESERVE AN ANSWER!

Perhaps because she knows that they know that the KPI fails the  vital Sequential Test and that the homes built there will have higher footings to fend off flooding – but what about all the other homes in Elmbridge that don’t have that protection? Do they run for the hills?

It must be  quite sickening for people in the Eastern villages to  listen to the constant stream of “sympathies and condolences” extended to “poor old Cranleigh” by Waverley councillors. Surely the time has come for Cranleigh Parish Council to hold a PUBLIC MEETING and to call all their elected representatives to account?

Brian Adams – Portfolio Holder for Planning was condescending, almost to the point of rudeness, when he insulted the rights and intelligence of every elected member by suggesting that because the site is in the Daft Local Plan they had to vote for it!!  He also claimed that the Secretary of State had “really put the cat among the pigeons by Calling in the Dunsfold application.” We think he probably means – put the diggers into more  green fields.”

Claims of “Blue Asbestos in the water supply”  effluent in the stream chortling its way to poison Bramley and overloaded stinking poo factory, crowded roads, antiquated school buildings, inadequate GP  facilities, and overdevelopment fatigue were – totally ignored. So were fractured water pipes, highway problems and road closures! Why because the East, in particular Cranleigh , has become your Waverley’s Promised Land – overflowing with – ‘shit and money’ much of which will be coming from its countryside clothed in concrete. 

Out go jobs and lettuce growing – a horticultural tradition in  Cranleigh about which the Flying Dutchman boasted  the country needed – for 50 years (mainly when he needed planning permission Oh! and didn’t he take his neighbour to the High court and win  damages for his lettuces?   –  and in comes concrete and bricks. Out goes top quality agricultural land – in comes the Wandsworth Wanderers and the Wimbledon Wives, hope they bring their green wellies with them! . Because If you can Adam and Eve it one  officer said: that the land was “only subject to flooding when there were  flash floods that quickly subsided , so no-one would be trapped on site for long!! Well that’s alright then!

Cranleigh’s Boudicca bowled  a googly at the officers when she told them that there was now an advertisement in Cranleigh  for new houses on the five-year old   Swallowhurst development – asking buyers to: “Make me an offer.” 

It is well-known locally the million pound homes on clay subsoil are suffering from settlement problems and flooding!

Every resident over there in the east should listen to the first part of the Webcast. Start at 3 mins 20 and hear for  themselves the good reasons eight councillors opposed  exactly the same application  they had also refused only six months earlier. Is that the Cranleigh sewer we can smell or is it – ‘Your Waverley’?

 Cranleigh Parish Councillor Richard Bryant for the Cranleigh Civic Society and Councillor Brian Freestone for Cranleigh Parish Council excelled themselves, and it was horrifying to hear of the litany of infrastructure/water/sewage/flooding problems which villagers  have and  will face in the future. And…did we hear the distant sound of “Legal Challenge’ mentioned.

But it was Councillor Liz Townsend who told her colleagues on the council she so recently joined Cranleigh’s mood was turning ugly and villagers felt under represented and their views and concerns were consistently ignored by Waverley’s  planning  decision makers. KPI Was “unsustainable” and was the least favoured site in the vital Sequential Test – Hewitts was now coming forward with 120 homes and the School site in central Cranleigh with over 90 – and, why was a new Recreation Centre being planned with a KPI contribution, without any consultation to Cranleigh PC on the parish owned – Snoxhall Playing Fields, she asked?

WW wonders if ‘Your Waverley” intends to do away with the ‘local voice’ altogether – so watch out all you other parish council out there – it could  be your turn next!

By-Pass Byham obviously wants more traffic on Bramley’s roads – he couldn’t wait to stick his mit into the air. Ah! but of course it is only Dunsfold’s traffic he opposes isn’t it. But his parish council  happily trousers a cash hand-out for all those HGV’s thundering through his High Street on their way to deposit their loads at Cranleigh Brick and Tile. Judas!

Here’s what the Cranleigh Society has to say:http://www.cranleighsociety.org/2017/03/16/kpi-a2-dominion-granted-permission/