This week yet another planning application was lodged with Waverley Planners for a slightly reduced scheme. Care-home beds down from 80 to 64, community beds down from 20 to 16 and the 26 bedsits down to 14 1/2bed apartments. However, a previous application for the larger number refused in November 2018 has gone to appeal. Because the so-called ‘Charity’ claims its last application was refused on flimsy planning grounds and it wants to continue – thinking BIG while duping the public into believing it has scaled-down the £14m scheme!
Those planning grounds which prompted refusal included a petition signed by 4,000 members of the local community and many hundreds of letters from the public opposing it on grounds including overdevelopment; bulk and massing; and more! Definitely ‘flimsy?’
The newly formed Cranleigh Village HEALTH Trust has morphed out of the Cranleigh Village Hospital Trust which trousered £1.8m from the pockets of the residents of the eastern villages over a period of 20 + long years to build a replacement hospital and a day hospital! Whilst not a shovel has hit the Knowle Lane ground the old cottage hospital now boasts -a new X-Ray dept, midwifery hub, extensive out-Patients, a phlebotomy service and a physiotherapy department.
And…wait for it – another group led by Lynda MacDermott and the Cranleigh League of Friends is working up a scheme to provide the eastern villages with a long-called for Acute Treatment Centre – a level-up from a Minor Injuries Unit, which would take the pressure off the Royal Surrey Hospital. All in a readymade base at – Cranleigh Village Hospital.
A couple of weeks ago CVHT chairman Dr Robin Fawkner-Corbett warned the parish council, which provided the land for the development after a land swap – 20 years ago that a new scheme was in the pipe-line and an appeal was being lodged.
Its former ‘parish partner’ has subsequently written to the charity seeking the return of the land as it had not adhered to an agreement between the parties that the land would be returned to the parish if a Hospital was not built within five years. This followed a mandate voted on by residents at a public meeting.
The Waverley Web wonders if the Charity will attempt the same ruse it used last time the scheme went to Waverley planners…? It almost got away with funding a dedicated planning officer, a colleague of one of the CVHT Trustees to assess the scheme. Of course, CVHT saw this as it mentions on its website as “unfortunate” as the officer had a good grasp of the scheme. Possibly a similar grasp as the Waverley solicitor – one Daniel Bainbridge son of yes, you guessed – one of the CVHT Trustees.
Is it any wonder the eastern villagers don’t trust this dodgy outfit, which is already being lambasted on the Cranleigh Community Boards. Apparently, its hospital spokesman and chief marketeer Martin Bamford (BB) has prompted his mates to call to kill-off the Waverley Web. We wonder why?
Over 2,400 suspected cases at HC-One care homes
The leap in care home figures for England and Wales, follow Age UK’s warning to the government that deaths in care homes are “running wild”.
Sir David Behan, director of HC-One, Britain’s largest care home operator, has told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, coronavirus is already in two-thirds (232) of the group’s care homes.
HC-One operates around 330 homes. By Monday night (13 April) there had been 2,447 cases of either suspected or confirmed COVID-19 within its care homes.
The deaths included one staff member.
You have to ask what after numerous planning applications regardless of the cost to the people who have donated money and so many residents against a new private nursing home lies at the end of all this for the trustees. Surely some of them must grasp the feeling of the people who donated money surrounding their plans and why do they not hold a public meeting, is it because they are worried about what they will be told.
We understand the charity says it cannot hold a public meeting during the Covid-19 pandemic!
However if it really wanted to ascertain the publics’ views it would have held off for a few more weeks- and actually listened to the very loud voices over there in your eastern villages.
How we wonder, can the charity justify the huge costs involved in an appeal running in tandem with another planning application? As you will have noticed in our recent post – the previous Waverley Borough Council officer was also funded by CVHT!!
Everyone is wondering – from what we hear – what is actually behind this controversial scheme. Is there oil or gas or even gold under that parish field? And, there were we thinking it was all in Dunsfold.