For months, wannabe developers have been knocking on residents’ doors in Cranleigh. 

As the great building bonanza continues and the once rural village has morphed into Cranleigh New Town, determined developer continue their search for sites.

The latest verdant countryside is the land behind Cranleigh Mead and Seltops Close in the Mead Road area of Cranleigh.

The owner of the 140 store has also appealed to the Government to build 160 homes in Knowle Lane.

Developers earmark Knowle Lane, Cranleigh, as THE growth area for new homes.

The residents are regularly approached with inflated offers to buy their properties. We understand from the locals living there that most have refused, but some living in Seltops Close are sorely tempted to sell up and run.

One resident told the Waverley Web recently that offers for modest homes are so inflated that they are becoming too good to refuse, and the deals on the table may soon be taken.

As concern grows that yet another new housing estate may be on the cards, so does the traffic. At certain times of the day, Cranleigh remains gridlocked. The narrow one-way bridges on the entrance roads into Cranleigh have made traffic congestion worse.

Antony Garstone has published his fears on the local community board, saying:

Our problem is that if this does go through and houses are built, it will completely change the character of not only Seltops Close but also New Park Road and the surrounding roads as feeders to this new estate.

Seltops Close will no longer be a quiet cul-de-sac, but become a thoroughfare feeding all the houses on the new estate allowing access to the village. I know that these things take time to happen, but once started I feel we will have little chance of stopping it. Seltops does not want this to happen. Cranleigh can’t cope with any more development. Just look at the state of everything. When Horsham Road was shut it became a nightmare with 8-wheelers and buses’ using New Park Road.

Another Cranleigh resident wrote:

I wonder how all those people who objected to Dunsfold Airfield being developed – and that includescour new MP Jeremy Hunt who has recenly jumped ship from over-developed Farnham. 

He and former MP Anne Milton and Protect Our Waveley delayed the development by years, which has now left Waverley without a five year housing land supply, and Cranleigh and the eastern villages losing their treasured countryside and their character.”