…. OR is it just doing what it does best – everything in its power to protect its own arse? … and bugger the rest of the borough?

Here is a letter that has been circulated to Waverley Borough Council, the borough’s Town and Civic Societies, parish councils  and – would you Adam and Eve it – to the Waverley Web! This scurrilous little blog that is much derided and sneered at by the worried-well-to-do supporters of Protect Our Little Corner (POLCOW) because it doesn’t support their naked ambition to protect their own little enclaves and has made no bones about its support for BROWN FIELDS FIRST.

Open Letter from POW regarding OAN (pdf)

POW on Local Plan

Having spent around £270,000 of Waverley taxpayers’ money fighting the Dunsfold Park planning application for 1,800 homes – and opposing another 600 which have been included in the Local Plan on a brownfield site – (POLCOW)  – now wants the Secretary of State to rule on the Local Plan – and reassess the Objectively Assessed Need the (OAN) and deflate, what it claims are, the inflated housing numbers now proposed.

Despite weak and very vapid claims to the contrary, (POLCOW) rose from the ashes of Stop Dunsfold Park New Town. Its supporters – many of whom had supported its earlier incarnation, (SDPNT) or was it (SPENT) – were acutely conscious of the criticism it received for being a one-trick-pony – It’s all about Dunsfold, stupid! – so it cobbled together the caring, sharing nom de plume, PROTECT OUR WAVERLEY – in a half-hearted attempt to deflect criticism from the wider borough and persuade (for which read FOOL) residents over here in the centre and West of the Borough that they cared, really, really cared about us!

And now they’re having a fit of the vapours and trying to lock the bedroom door after the bride has bolted!

Or do we detect just a smidgen of guilt creeping into the psyche of the Cash & Clout brigade that persuaded their duplicitous MPs, Mistress Milton and Jeremy SHunt, to twist the arm of Sajid Javid, the Communities Secretary, to call in the airfield application? Pity they didn’t exercise their caring, sharing principles a little more widely – as their name aims to suggest – and persuade them to get the Knowle Park Initiative development called in whilst they were at it! (Lots of brown envelopes passed hands there of course)  Silly us! They didn’t because they don’t care about Cranleigh. It’s all about Dunsfold, stupid!

But we digress! Is (POLCOW) now more than a little fearful that its tactics may have backfired spectacularly and its  determined efforts to stop brownfield development may now result in plastering the remainder of the borough – even their own precious little corner of it (Heavens to Betsy! Wash your mouth with soap and water at the very idea!) – in a carpet of concrete?

We don’t like to say we told you so but … – oh, go on, then we will! What have we been telling the worried-well-to-do of Awfold/Kerchingfold/Duncefold/and Where-has-all-the-traffic-come-from?

(Forget Bramley – the Bramley Babes are going to be on the receiving end of increased traffic regardless of where the homes go over there in the East.)

We told them, time and time and time … and time again! BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU WISH FOR!
Along with MPs Mistress Milton and Jeremy SHunt, the Cash & Clout brigade may just have dealt the biggest disservice to the entire borough of Waverley in its long and chequered history.

And, you know what, future generations of Waverley residents – our children and our grandchildren – may well point to the members of Protect our Waverley and ask them what they actually did to prevent the concreting over of the borough and all just because they were determined – whatever it took, no matter what the cost to the rest of the borough – to stop the largest brownfield site in the borough from being developed?

Of course, when the battle is over and they are vanquished, they will up sticks and move away to greener pastures. Leaving the not-so-well-to-do to make the best of the carpet of concrete they left in their wake!