Yes, folks, you guessed it, Bob Lees, Chairman of Protect Our (Little Corner) of Waverley, has been busy welcoming the Secretary of State’s decision to call-in the Dunsfold Park application on behalf of ‘the thousands who protested against [the] proposal’. And, in the process, taking the opportunity to spread more of this duplicitous organisation’s propaganda and misinformation.
Where were Bob Lees and his cohorts – who claim to care so much about protecting ‘Our Waverley’ a week ago when the Knowle Park Initiative (KPI) was granted planning consent for 265 homes on a flood plain at the aptly named Cranleigh Waters?
Were they out in their thousands – their hundreds even – in support of Cranleigh residents who feel ‘under represented, bullied and victimised’, according to a Cranleigh Parish Councillor?
Not on your nelly! Presumably, they were too busy watching box-sets of Brookside to remind themselves of the horrors that await them if housing is ever built at Dunsfold Park!
According to our Cranleigh correspondent, looking for representatives – even one member of POW would have done! – in the public gallery at The Burys It was a classic case of Where’s Wally?
It would seem Bob Lees has been so busy spewing his views on Dunsfold Park’s call-in, he entirely overlooked to send anyone along to object to the KPI proposals! No surprises there then!!! Had he done so maybe, just maybe, Councillor Isherwood (now known as that ‘Plonker Isherwood’ – in honour of Del Boy’s hapless brother Rodney, might have thought twice before he used his casting vote to force through an application that divided the Planning Committee and had ‘bullied and victimised’ Cranleigh residents crying into their cornflakes the following morning.
WHY, don’t they represent the wider Waverley? POW – Stands for Protect OUR WAVERLEY – So where were you when we were all objecting to major developments in the countryside in FARNHAM?
In all but name they are a reincarnation of Stop Dunsfold Park New Town, a campaign group specifically set up to protect their little corner of the borough – Alfold and Dunsfold.
Cranleigh is a mere six miles up the road from Alfold and Dunsfold – less as the crow flies – but POW don’t put a toe out of bed, let alone outside their front doors to protest against anything unless it has the name Dunsfold Park in it!
Cranleigh and its infrastructure is on its knees, bowing under the weight of over a 1000 new houses that have all been consented since POW was formed!
Do they give a damn? Do they hell! In fact, the more the merrier in Cranleigh, Godalming and Farnham as far as Protect our Little Corner is concerned. The more houses the surrounding towns take the better for Alfold and Dunsfold!
Is this disingenous bunch even aware of all th e other planning applications in the pipeline on the green fields of aloofly and Dunsfold? No why would they be?
In the Press recently : Mr Lies (Ooops! must be a Fruedian slip of the fingers, we meant to type Lees – really we did!) refers to ‘inadequate promises of contributions by[Dunsfold Park] to infrastructure’. INADEQUATE CONTRIBUTIONS? Hello! Wakey, wakey! What the f**k is inadequate about a rumoured £50 million pounds worth of contributions? We don’t see any other developer in or around Cranleigh offering anything like that level of contributions to improve local infrastructure or, for that matter, their combined contributions approaching anywhere near that sum … or have we missed something?
And what about Mr Lies (ooops! that finger’s got a mind of its own!) claims, that the Environment Agency and Surrey County Highways had made substantial objections? Yes, they did have some objections but what Mr Lies (Ooops!), oh so conveniently, forgot to clarify was that those objections have been overcome.
But then Mr Lies (Ooops! We did it again) and his cohorts at ‘P O L Corner’ have form in this respect. They littered the countryside, they claim to be so keen to protect, with dirty great banners in which they asserted that housing at Dunsfold Park would add 42-MINUTES delays to journey times.
So alarmed were we, at Waverley Web, by those startling numbers that we spent days trawling through the planning papers in an effort to substantiate them and what did we discover? That the statement – or should we say lies? – had been taken entirely out of context and deliberately misreported.
What they should have said was that WITHOUT development at Dunsfold Park, delays on the A281 in the coming years could reach 42 minutes but WITH the MITIGATION that development at Dunsfold Park would bring those delays would be reduced to 2 MINUTES! Strikes us that alone is a good enough reason to build houses at Dunsfold Park!
We wish the government wasn’t forcing thousands more homes on Surrey – and Waverley in particular – but they are and that being the case we need to protect as much of our countryside as we can – not just Alfold and Dunsfold! And that means building on previously developed brownfield sites, not the precious green fields in the NorthSouth,East and West.
Our advice to Mr Lies (Ooops!) and Co – horts is either start protecting the entire borough of Waverley – although you’ve left it a bit bloody late for that! – or rename yourselves Protect our Ass!
And if you Really, really want to protect the entire borough, why don’t you start right now by lobbying Matron Milton and the Secretary of State to call-in the KPI application because, as we all know, there’s reasons-a-plenty for so doing!
NEWS IN BRIEF
Elsewhere, writing in the Surrey Ad’s ever decreasing letters page recently, a Jane Winder (Whiner more like!) claims that ‘Those who actually know [Dunsfold Park], understand full well that it is an unsuitable and unsustainable place?’
Really? Really? REALLY?
So tell us, Ms Whiner, what’s so unsustainable about a village with direct access onto the A281, it’s own shops, it’s own primary school, health centre, church, recreation facilities and a developer-subsidised bus service to Guildford, Horsham and all points inbetween?
In our humble opinion, that makes this proposed new village a damn sight more sustainable than Dunsfold Village where we understand you live! Dunsfold village doesn’t have a school, or a GP and the village shop relies on volunteers. All well and good but, actually, it’s selfish people like you, opting to live in the middle of nowhere, who are generating all the traffic on the A281 that people like you are so busy complaining about as you have to get in your cars to go anywhere. Come to think of it, a new village at Dunsfold Park makes Alfold and Dunsfold more sustainable and less of a drain on the rest of us as you can walk to their facilities instead of driving along the A281 to Cranleigh, Godalming, Guildford and Horsham! Time to stop whining Ms Winder and start thinking about your own impact on society.