There are calls across the borough of Waverley for work to start on brownfield sites with planning consents – that lie dormant.
The largest in the borough is Dunsfold Park—it recently opened its swanky new entrance—but not one of the proposed 1,800 consented new homes has yet been built.
Is Dunsfold’s Canada Avenue a road to nowhere?
MISSING IN ACTION AT DUNSFOLD OPENING.
Meanwhile, the Government remains impotent as thousands of acres of land with the potential to provide housing, including affordable homes, lie fallow across the country.
Lib Dem activists recently protested around Farnham’s Woolmead development site, demanding the Government take action against this Farnham undeveloped brownfield site.
They held up placards asking the Government to:
‘MAKE DEVELOPERS BUILD HERE’
The Berkeley Bunnies gained consent in 2018 to burrow into the Farnham site without spending a penny on any ‘affordable’ homes. Planning officers convinced councillors at the time that experts had determined that if the developer were forced to do so, the 147-dwelling development would be impossible.
The site has remained an unsightly mess, even without the need to provide any “affordable” homes.
Lib Dem campaigners, including Castle Ward by-election candidate Theresa Meredith-Hardy, have gathered to highlight the “flawed” planning” system.
The same flawed planning system has allowed Trinity College Cambridge to sit on a 257-acre site, which includes 2,600 homes in Waverley’sLocal Plan.
Residents are asking if they are waiting for house values to rise. Farnham protestors said existing planning rules allow developers to leave a site with planning permission empty once they have made a ‘material ‘start’ on construction “for as long as they want” while there is a local and national housing shortage.
Meanwhile, to the east of Waverley at Dunsfold, the amazing approach Road—Canada Avenue—has been built in a blaze of publicity. Locally, it has been nicknamed “The Road To Nowhere.”
Is Dunsf” ld’s Canada Avenue a road to nowhere?
A material start” can constitute anything from digging a small service trench to demolishing buildings, as at the Woolmead in Farnham.
Ms Meredith-Hardy, who is standing for election to Waverley Borough Council on April 18 following the resignation of Farnham Residents’Residents’rHeather McLean, said:
“This site, right in the middle of Castle Ward, shows the problem.
“Because of this empty site – with planning permission not being used – which is also the case with the large site at Dunsfold aerodrome, developers are allowed to apply for and win planning permission on greenfield sites in Farnham which aren’t in Local Plans.
“Waverley is powerless to do anything. Liberal Democrats would charge council tax on the houses that haven’t been built to put financial pressure on developers to build on sites like this.”
She added many people stopped “to wish us luck with our protest.”
Is this site becoming a Lib-Dem propaganda platform now?
If the Tories were protesting about the disgraceful state of Woolmead then we would be posting on that too.
I do like your description of bused-in LibDem election campaigners (most of whom don’t even live in Farnham) as somehow being “Activists”
So where have these fine activists been for the last few years, whilst the Woolmead and other sites have laid dormant? Instead of just attending the grand opening of Canada Avenue, why didn’t they use that opportunity to protest? (oops I forgot – there wasn’t an election in the offing)
What a coincidence that they have become active in the run up to an election, trying to convince Castle Ward residents that they will actually have influence on Government planning policy.
I do support the idea that something has to be done about these sites, but using it as an election tool is rather cynical. Let’s protest all year round,
Anyone and everyone should be writing to their MPs calling for a change in planning law to make developers pay for sitting on sites such as Woolmead. We have heard Cllr Liz Townsend, the portfolio Holder for Waverley Planning calling for years for the Government to force developers to build-out sites in a given period.
It’s a bit rich for the Lib Dem candidate in the Castle by-election to suddenly start a campaign over the Woolmead site. It’s been like that under Lib Dem / Farnham Residents’ control of Waverley for years. And Lib Dems didn’t even stand in Castle Ward back in May 23. John Gaskell (Labour) came close in May 23 and is the only candidate from that election who is standing again in this by-election caused by a Resident who resigned.
Local authorities are complicit in this failed planning system by “screening” out the need for Environmental Impact Assessments. The government is complicit by not providing an economic means of objecting to such folly, which is a breach of the Aarhus convention. This Convention empowers public participation in environmental matters founded on the principles of participative democracy. Perhaps the UK Government has forgotten that it is a signatory to the Convention?