Our followers at the Waverley Web wonder if this short piece in Surrey Live has anything to do with a bad attack of you scratch my back, I scratch yours. https://t.co/WDWgCAfKxd
You may have noticed that a whole gamut of different agencies and organisations pick the best village to live in in Britain; according to GetAgent, it’s Milford.
Cranleigh New Town
Once upon a time, it was Cranleigh. However, no realist could now describe it as such. It is a town that is growing exponentially and which Waverley Council now includes with its major towns of Godalming, Farnham and Haslemere. Though if you made this statement in Cranleigh’s streets, you could be lynched by the locals.
Milford will shortly become a suburb. Not a village. It will dare we suggest that when the excavators dig into the orchards, golf courses, fruit farms and fields, it will become a satellite of Godalming.
Which means Elstead could be next.
Impossible, we hear you cry?
Just look at Alfold, which could soon become part of Dunsfold – where we have long suggested the name ALDUN. Is there a new garden village named ‘ ALDUN’ being planned in Waverley?
Not all the land from the A3 to Elstead is common, given the collapse of agriculture with farmers unable to afford fuel, animal feed and unworkable State aid. Many are being forced out of the profession every week. Who would blame them for jacking it in?
The elephant in the room
If the rose-tinted spectacles of happy families cannot find a home in Milford, then Elstead is next. Developers will be ready to service their every desire. Particularly as Waverley’s long-heralded Dunsfold Garden Village doesn’t look like making its debut any time soon. Is that new road – a road to nowhere to keep its planning consent alive?
What the Government says:
But there’s a recession. Additionally, the Secretary of State for Levelling Up Gove yesterday abandoned housing targets.
Does that mean Waverley now has a 5-year housing land supply? No – that was a political decision to keep the Tory back-bench voting fodder at bay. At least until after the next election.
What Gove says:
“Centrally dictated targets are merely advisory.” So, in other words, there are still targets. And, he says: The Government is sticking to its manifesto commitment to buid 300,000 houses a year. But he also said “We want to build homes where we need them.”
Tory policy to solve a recession is to build houses. It’s page one of the How to Keep in Power Guide.
Surely the floodplain is a barrier?
It hasn’t stopped developers from building the appropriately named Watermeadow Place or Willowbrook in Cranleigh.
Lusting to live in Milford has to be a wake-up call for Elstead. The suburb of Farnham or Godalming? Take your pick. No shortage of land around Tilford. Big houses with land whose owners can see the tide of suburbia heading towards them will flee, and their country residences will fall to the bulldozer and the encroaching hordes lusting for a tiny bit of countryside where they can complain about every last aspect of country life, takeover the parish council and protest against any further house building.
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