Month: October 2018

My my! – What high manhole covers the BB’s are building in Cranleigh.

FINISHED FLOOR LEVEL – Otherwise know in Cranleigh as F**k the Flood Levels!

 

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 What high manhole covers the Berkeley Bunnies are installing on their site in Knowle Lane, Cranleigh!

An eagle-eyed resident who took this photo forwarded it to the Waverley Web as they couldn’t quite believe what they were seeing. ‘Surely, this must just be a positioning exercise?’ was the question they posed. One of our many Cranleigh correspondents wasn’t so sure and, after diligently checking the planning application came back and said, ‘Nope! What you see is what you get’!

Bluntly, both Berkeley Homes and Waverley planners knew that the Knowle Lane site wasn’t sustainable under the sequential test but they pushed it through anyway and the manhole covers will need to be this high above ground level in an effort to avoid flooding.

Few Cranleigh residents will forget the flooding in these fields – and elsewhere in Cranleigh – during the heavy floods of December 2013. But neither the Berkeley Bunnies nor  Waverley Planners care because they won’t be living in the houses the next time Cranleigh Floods.

Have we heard a peep out of POW about the ‘sustainability’ of this development? Not bloody likely? 
Where were POW when Cranleigh residents were fighting, tooth and nail to oppose development on a site that, in addition to flooding, is on a narrow country lane, betwixt and between the rear entrances to Sainsbury’s and Marks & Sparks – both of whom receive daily deliveries from HGVs – and a business, called Kerbside – which does what it says on the tin! – causing traffic chaos.

Not to mention CVNT’s (Cranleigh Village Nursing Home Trust’s) plans to build a private nursing home with a 28 flat apartment block adjacent to it, just a hop, skip and a field away across the lane?

If ever a development was unsustainable – one of POW’s favourite refrains – it was this one!

But, despite its name – Protect our Waverley – the only part of Waverley Capt’n Bob and his cohorts are interested in protecting is their own little corner, over there in Dunsfold. They really couldn’t give a damn if the good folks of Cranleigh see their furniture floating down the High Street as, memorably, happened in the great floods of 1968 … Nik Pigeon and Chris Britton hope to have sold their houses and wiped the dust of Waverley off their boots by then and Capt’n Bob, like Noah, will sail serenely on with Stacey Strumpett & Cliff Clavin on the Good Ship POW!

What a crock of crap poor old Cranleigh is sitting on thanks to the greed of the Berkeley Bunnies, the stupidity of Waverley Planners and the selfishness of POW and its supporters!

We simply console ourselves with the thought that what goes around, comes around and, talking of crap, just how is Awfold going to cope with the affluent’s effluent emanating from Thakeham Homes’ scheme at Springbok? No doubt bosom buddies Betty Ames, Chris Britton, Nik Pigeon, & Crystal Tipps Weddell have all the answers! And we just can’t wait to hear them … we could do with a good laugh in face of the latest crisis in Cranleigh!

And, we thought we had it bad over here in Farnham – beginning to make Crest Nicholson look like Mary Poppins.

Do you remember when we told you Scuba potholing was becoming the latest sporting craze?

Did you know that Surrey’s roads are now sooooooo bad, that people have begun putting sticking plaster over the cracks?

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Some are so bad, residents are taking up Potholing at weekends in the country roads.

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Come to Surrey and visit the UK’s capital of potholes – on and off-road!

Screen Shot 2018-10-25 at 09.39.35.pngHowever, the Waverley Web has decided to have its very own personal gripe to-day! Why shouldn’t we indulge ourselves from time to time? South West Trains – GRUHHHH!! Along with thousands of others, we couldn’t get to work in London yesterday due to a signal failure. So we tried to get there by road and due to the gridlock on the A31 and on the A3 due to gridlock in Guildford turned around and decided to take a long walk off a short cliff!

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Who exactly IS responsible for the Blightwells debacle?

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Here’s what one Farnham resident believes.

Sir,

— While feelings in Farnham, both among residents and the town’s many visitors, reflect a mixture of grief, anger and disbelief that we have allowed the catastrophe that is Brightwells to befall us, should we not reflect upon who exactly is responsible?

I don’t mean those that drew up the scheme in the first place since it was roundly and rightly rejected immediately by the Farnham public. But what about those that continue to support it now that it can be seen to be so completely outdated in concept and design and has proved to be a commercial flop before a single brick has been laid?

Latest in this group is Surrey County Council leader David Hodge, who has at the last minute committed £30 million of our money into dragging the scheme from the scrap heap where it belongs, having failed to raise any interest whatsoever from professional commercial investors?

In terms of council responsibility, it goes without saying that Waverley’s joint planning committee members cannot take all the blame since only eight of its current members actually live in Farnham against 38 that don’t (such is local democracy in our town these days), the latter presumably being only too pleased that schemes such as this don’t take place on their patch.

There are two local public servants, however, that do spring immediately to mind. The Right Hon Jeremy Hunt has maintained a complete and unforgivable silence on what is by far the most massive development ever to take place in Farnham, right in the heart of his constituency, arousing many querulous inquiries as to his motives. Then there is Julia Potts, leader of Waverley Council, who has remained pugnaciously opposed to any criticism of the scheme and immune to the deafening public outcry against it.

For Crest Nicholson’s part. a name familiar to those that attended the 2013 meeting to approve the compulsory purchase and closure of The Marlborough Head pub will be Chris Tinker, the company’s major projects chairman. His evidence’of commercial funding about to be confirmed for the project tipped the Government Inspector in favour of the purchase so allowing the project to proceed, a promise that evaporated as quickly as it had appeared.

Then finally there is Pam Alexander CBE. Ms Alexander is chairman of something called Design Council CABE whose raison d’être is to ensure that developers provide us with decent, appropriate, popular and well-designed schemes. CABE’s website states that “crucial to inclusive design is consultation with user groups, putting people who represent a diversity of age, ability, gender and community at the heart of the design process” and that “the effect (that such schemes) will have on the surrounding landscape and its distinctive historical and cultural context has to be evaluated as do the implications for the area’s circulation patterns, neighbouring activities and property uses. The views and sensitivities of the surrounding community should also be given weight”.

It is impossible to imagine a scheme less in line with the stated aims of CABE or with the needs and aspirations of a community such as Farnham than Crest Nicholson’s monstrous and destructive Brightwells development. One is led to wonder what convinced Ms Alexander to keep her eyes and ears so firmly closed with regard to the scheme during the six-year period to January this year while she was employed by Crest Nicholson as a non executive director on a ‘fee’ of 50,000 per annum, so making a mockery of her position at CABE.

So there we have it, my list of the wanted. Would it not be appropriate to spend the £100,000 pounds promised by Waverley and Crest on ‘public art’ for their scheme on a fitting monument of some kind to these people? Suggestions welcome. For starters, what about an edition of ‘Wanted’ posters to decorate the new East Farnham Wall that now surrounds the site …?

Andrew Jones, Fox Yard, Farnham

 

 

Just a few days ago there was a ​public outcry over potential damage to Ancient Woodland and protected trees on a housing development in Wrecclesham.

Bewley Homes gallops into Farnham and rides roughshod all over ‘Your Waverley.’

Could this possibly be the tree that Bewley Homes left behind?

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As trees, hedges and even ancient woodland, bite the dust all over the borough of Waverley, the WW has injected just a  little humour into this very serious subject.

 

POW in takeover bid for Awfold’s Neighbourhood Plan?

 

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Left Councillor Kevin Deanus joins villagers to protest against the Springbok application – has the councillor who has fought development changed his mind? Has the Alfold Bobby’s tirade stopped the creation of Alfold New Town?

As if it hadn’t enough on its hands fighting the Dunsfold Park developer, the mutter in the Awfold gutter is that Protect our Little Corner is making a takeover bid for Awfold’s Neighbourhood Plan… and soon its parish council!

 Great, they’re going to stop development in Awfold, we hear you cry. And not before time! Finally, they’re taking an interest in somewhere other than Dunsfold Aerodrome. Well done, POW, you’re finally living up to your name!

Well, er …, no, not exactly! According to our informants – and they are many! – POW is planning to concrete all over Awfold’s green and pleasant fields in its latest bid to stop development just a hop, skip and a field away at Dunsfold Aerodrome, the largest brownfield site in the borough.

WHAT???

You couldn’t make it up, really you couldn’t! A scheme that was turned down at Appeal by a Government Inspector earlier this year is, only months later, is now being promoted by the Neighbourhood Plan Committee.

WTF is going on in Awfold, we hear you ask? Awfold residents could not have made it clearer how they felt about Thakeham Homes’ Springbok application – when they turned out in their droves to give it a big, huge thumbs down – but Thakeham’s supporters are determined to get the development back on the agenda.

Are Thakeham’s supporters now promoting another of its cunning plans?

You might well ask! Of course, everyone knows Nik Pigeon, Chairman of Awfold Parish Council, has declared a pecuniary interest in the Springbok scheme but, according to our informants – who have been busy trawling through Awfold Parish Council’s parish papers, following recent, startling revelations about the Parish Council’s money-laundering activities – piles of dodgy do-do are being uncovered. One of which whiffs to high heaven!

Apparently, in April this year, up popped POW’s very own slippery little hypocrite  Chris Britton, who, together with  his wife Cilla, now sit on Awfold’s Neighbourhood Plan Committee

So why would someone who lives in a house overlooking Dunsfold Aerodrome whose been fighting the Dunsfold Developer tooth-and-nail, to prevent development on his doorstep, want to team up with another developer to help them build homes just a hop, skip and a field away on the other side of the aerodrome on someone else’s doorstep? It really does beg the question what’s in it for him?

In fact, call us stupid but the Waverley Web, can’t understand why anyone is calling for more sites for development  there because the village only has to find 125 homes to comply with Your Waverley’s Local Plan and it already has:

• 55 consented – and going up fast – at Sweeters Copse as part of Phase 1, with further homes in the pipeline for Phase 2;
• 23 consented at Brockhurst Farm on the Horsham Road;
• 57?  at the former Wyevale Garden Centre, where consent has already been granted for part of the site and a new application is seeking to increase that number;
• 11 at Oakhurst Farm (SCC) 
• Not to mention numerous conversions of barns and outbuildings – including at the Alfold Craft Centre, and a number of individual new homes – all of which are described as ‘windfall’ sites!

So, without even trying, Awfold has already exceeded the 125 homes it needs by over a fifth and yet POW’s Boy Britton is busy promoting other schemes including at Springbok, owned by Care Ashore, or as some believe Thakeham Homes?

In addition, as part of the call for sites, numerous other Alfold landowners – most of whom objected to development at Dunsfold Aerodrome,  – have rushed to throw their land into the hat, including Care Ashore’s land south of Satchel Court Drive; The Nutshell, Horsham Road; Glebelands Farm, Loxwood Road; land at the entrance to Wildwood Golf Club; Bridian Farm, Little Bookers Lea Farm, to name but a few.

Carry on at this rate and Awfold’s green and pleasant fields will quickly become Awfold New Town whilst, next door, the largest brownfield site in the borough sits idle if POW’s Boy Britton has anything to do with it. What a treacherous little Weasel he is!

Care Ashore and Thakeham Homes’ boat sunk by a Government Inspector!

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Another shedload of homes on their way to the countryside in Alfold – adjacent to Dunsfold Airfield.

Don’t Panic Mr Mainwaring! It’s only Awfoldgate again…

ANOTHER BAD NEWS DAY IN ALFOLD?