Since ‘Your Waverley’s commitment to spend £12.7million on a new leisure centre – there has been much talk about where it should go? Should the Village Way centre be demolished and rebuilt, or refurbished and improved?

Rumours are rife about re-siting it on the proposed new private nursing home site in Knowle Lane now there is to be no replacement village hospital – or building it on the Snoxhall Playing fields?

Neither is an option as the Cranleigh Village Hospital Trust has tied up the former parish-owned land for a private nursing home development and the parish council which has been shafted by the charity, has tied up all the remainder of the parish land it owns into a Community Land Trust, to ensure it doesn’t happen again! This was prompted by the scurrilous behind the scenes dealings of a former parish council chairman who wanted to build on the nearby Beryl Harvey field donated to the village by the late Gordon Harvey, in memory of his wife. The benefactor’s son kiboshed the bid, with villagers backing, at a public meeting, and the plan to build houses on the allotment/conservation area in Knowle Lane was subsequently scrapped. 

We are reliably informed by villagers in the East, that as with the “replacement cottage hospital,” which will not now go ahead, local fundraising also paid for the creation of the original Cranleigh Leisure Centre, so villagers believe they are entitled to have their say?

We had hoped to bring you a  link to all the possible plans for the Village Way site – which should be open for consultation to allow Cranleigh residents to decide! But it has been removed by Waverley Council!

After 6 months of the details of all Waverley’s leisure improvements being online, the council took down the presentation after residents started to discuss it on Facebook. They realised it contained figures to be paid to a third party before a deal had been done.
Luckily residents here in Godalming had started sharing screenshots.

Don’t click on the link because it won’t work – a bit like Waverley Borough Council!

https://modgov.waverley.gov.uk/documents/s19759/Options%20Presentation%20for%20OS%2020.11.17.pdf