Some people are never satisfied – are they? Where once shrubs and garden plants grew – providing a much needed local service for all the other new homes – either up, going up or proposed in the little village on the Surrey/Sussex border – it now heralds bricks and concrete?
Developers are falling over themselves to get a slice of the Awful Alfold action – despite Waverley Planners efforts to fend them off.
Poor old Cllr Kevin Deanus! The local councillor has been fighting to keep Alfold’s rural image ever since he arrived at ‘Your Waverley.’ Now with the rumoured change of ownership of the nearby Dunsfold Aerodrome (proposed home of a new garden village), he might have a bigger fight on his hands? We were quite right here at the Waverley Web when we suggested this new name for the area.
Villagers are howling their objections over the e-mail network – and so is Thames Water. A little light reading here:document-8197177 – Thames Water
In a nutshell: Thames Water has identified an inability of the existing FOUL WATER network infrastructure to accommodate the needs of this development proposal.
And neither can the Royal Surrey Hospital! It comments in its letter to Waverley Planners.
“The Trust’s utilisation of acute bed capacity is at 95% which significantly exceeds the optimal 85% occupancy rate. This demonstrates that current occupancy levels are highly unsatisfactory, and the problem will be compounded by an increase in need created by the development which does not coincide with an increase in the number of bed spaces available at the Hospital. This is the inevitable result where clinical facilities are forced to operate at overcapacity. Any new residential development will add a further strain on the current acute healthcare system.”
It wants £160,000 if the development goes ahead towards providing healthcare.
Villager Mike Crabtree said:
The proposed increase in numbers for this development will lead to a housing density totally at odds with the existing settlement making it less likely to do anything other than stand out rather than blend in. Such a large number of houses with a generic design language is also at odds with the more diverse nature of the village housing stock. It is exceedingly hard to justify why such development needs to expand beyond the agreed quota. The benefit will be felt entirely by the developer rather than the village.
Alfold has already been besieged by developers seeking to exploit a perceived weakness in the local plan.
As recently refused applications have shown, there is very limited public transport in the village and ironically as this site was the main employment site in the village prior to developing, occupants will need private cars to drive to work, this is at odds with planning policy. The additional housing adds a number of extra cars roughly double the increase in houses.
Dear God, how many more bloody houses are they going to try and squeeze into a village that has no amenities?
Once again we have a developer trying to increase the number of Housing for this small Village with limited facilities or infrastructure. A village that has met its housing obligation of a min 125 Homes and in fact far exceeded it!It is simply not good enough to expect a Tier 3 Village to take on this volume of housing. There has been NO PUBLIC consultation on this – minimal for the previous application limited to a few local (Or not so local as we live closer and had none) neighbours, and the APC. They are basing this yet again on the fact that WBC MAY OR MAY NOT have its 5 year husing supply. – But that does not mean that housing should be DUMPED here in one of the smaller Villages.
Planning has to be appropriate to the location with it’s needs and resources and this simply isn’t. The fact that the Inspector granted the original application for 56 Homes and took no consideration of the other appeal applications – just shows the system is flawed. Reliance on the Dunsfold Park Application is NOT RELEVANT – It has not gone to Reserved Matters and should therefore not be considered and until it does.. this is flagrant Piggy-Backing off a development under review in Planning terms.I have no doubt that if this is refused they will re-apply for the 88 homes they also put into the mix. This is simply wrong and puts all smaller applications in jeopardy – which are the sort of applications the village can deal with. I will resubmit my original opposition under separate cover. But For now, I simply OBJECT
The application reference is WA/2021/0462.
The deadline for comments is 16 April 2021. But you can keep sending them in.
So long as the vast majority of Waverley Residents live in Farnham 32%, Godalming 18% and Haslemere 14% Compared to Cranleigh at 9% it was always inevitable that Dunsfold Park would end up being largest Egg in the Local Plan Basket and we all know the saying about putting all your Eggs in one basket!
Developers insist Waverley cannot meet their 5 Year Housing Plan and it appears from last night’s Eastern Planning meeting that we no longer have 5.3 years but 4.99 years… and so these developers, who think we have about a 3.5 Year plan, will carry on trying to load more and more Housing in the Eastern villages due to the lack of Greenbelt, AONB,SANGS, SPAs and all the other protections that are afforded across the rest of the Borough.
Countryside Beyond the Greenbelt means little to the Inspectors, and the fact that this particular site was only Partially PDL – was also not considered to be important.
There are no Sustainable methods of Transport here.. and you can stick Travel Plans in and talk about Car sharing and the Hourly Bus service (HELLO??) until the cows come home (if there are any left) 78 Homes will generate at least 140 new journey’s AM & PM daily onto the A281. The Garden centre did NOT and was used mainly on weekends and afternoons, as no-one went there during the rush hours.
New residents will be highly reliant on cars to get to shops, schools, medical centres etc and they will travel to Cranleigh (if they can get in) Guildford and Horsham, putting more strain on the A281.