CHIRPA, CHIRPA, CHEAP, CHEAP!
Here’s a comment we received from a Farnham follower of the Waverley Web and he certainly struck a chord with our team!
We continuously hear the mantra ‘build more affordable homes,’ however, experience shows most homes under construction are anything but affordable for your average punter.
One of our followers over there in the East of the borough tells us that the first 50 odd properties built in Cranleigh by Linden Homes were up for sale for up to £1.7m, with a just handful of homes to rent. Prices have yet to be announced by Cala Homes (which has just gone back to the parish council to say it is ditching 5 bed homes and building more 3 bed homes) but Crest Nicholson’s cheapest start at £419,000 and then the next ‘cheap’ property is £499,000! However, it is offering to do part exchange deals – but going by a recent post you may need a boat!
Copy re- produced by WW from the amazing Farnham Herald!
AN annual household income of around £115,000 per year is now needed to buy the average home in Waverley, the borough council revealed as part of its support for Rural Housing Week (July 3 to 7).
Led by the National Housing Federation, the aim of Rural Housing Week is to show how ‘affordable’ housing is vital to enable young households to stay in rural areas and sustain local services like schools, post offices and pubs.
Rural prices are typically around 26 per cent higher than their urban-equivalents – making home ownership even more difficult for many and threatening the very fabric of rural communities.
Responding, Waverley Borough Council has backed calls for more affordable housing to be built in the borough, and has pledged to increase the current level of housing supply in rural communities by six per cent per year for each of the next five years. WOW, let’s all hope some of them end up in Bramley, Shamley Green, Wonersh, Chiddingfold etc – and not just ‘poor old Alfold and Dunsfold.’
It claims most ‘affordable’ homes are either rented or shared ownership, where the customer can part-buy and part-rent. New affordable homes in rural areas are usually reserved for people with a genuine connection to the local community. Not any more they won’t be!
What a load of bunkum – homes now being provided on our green and pleasant fields can be disposed of to anyone, in the surrounding borough’s including Guildford, Woking and London. So stop kidding us Waverley Borough Council. Local homes for ‘local’ people.
WW, you would do well to take the writer of the letter above onboard.
Written with sense and resolve, what a change from some of your own bunkum… and from Farnham to boot!
This is exactly what needs to happen with new housing developments.
Would we be right in thinking you live in or around Dunsfold?
Ah – so we were right then! En route to the Witley Recycling Centre, which will result in hundreds of thousands of extra cars/lorries/van trips every year.
Or not at all, maybe Berkley will want to change the plans again and WBC councillor’s and planning officers will roll over and play brain dead again.
I’m close to Park Mead, Cranleigh
So, it’s ok to build on every green field around that village dubbed by ‘Your Waverley’ councillors – ‘poor old Cranleigh’ as they continue voting in favour of dumping half the borough’s housing allocation on you, is it? Over 1,500 already granted and many more to come! We believe, we are actually singing from the same hymn sheet?