A site where lettuces were once grown in their millions now houses some unhappy bunnies.
Here’s what one resident thinks of the housing block they are now living in on the former West Cranleigh Nurseries site in Cranleigh.
The owner, Nick Vrijland, dubbed it “affordable housing for village people” and is now promoting it at…wait for it!
A site that bears no resemblance to the fancy video the promoter put out to gain planning consent from Waverley Planners.”
“A block of apartments at Waterside in the rural style of other properties in and around Cranleigh” Really?A Cranleigh development dubbed as “awful & objectionable” has been approved.
Here’s what one resident who wrote to us on the Waverley Web comments page thinks of her new countryside home pictured below.
And here’s what a Godalming resident thinks of this one.
I totally sympathise with folk in Cranleigh regarding the awful design approved on the former lettuce farm land.It’s disgusting.It seems to be acceptable across the board to approve these ghastly buildings that look like prisons.This one in Godalming – Westbrook Mills. Enough said…
This suggests that they might not be for sustainable climate change design, which is even worst. The billions wasted on installing and removing flammable cladding from high rise buildings is an indication of England’s failed planning system. In one resident planning complaint that inert material was being replaced with combustable material in breach of the local plan. I was advised fire was not a planning issue, some high rise residents may now support the concern for fire risk.
None of this surprises me, people will say anything to get permission to build, I’ll admit some, and it is only some, of the new homes look ok but others are more akin to some new town like Milton Keynes and bear no resemblance to anything sympathetic to a rural village.
As for affordable homes for local people well I guess since the influx of the wealthy into the area- who now call themselves ‘locals’ I guess they are affordable for their kids once they leave home and start earning their six figure salaries, ok I may be being a tad cynical there but the point is that an awful lot of local people who’ve been here all or most of their lives could never afford these houses- especially when faced with wealthy- dare I use the word- ‘migrants’ escaping the hell hole otherwise known as London.
But then it’s the same over the whole country- less well off people forced out of their home village/town because of insane prices driven up by demand from the better off, yes I know that sounds like the politics of envy but there you go- a great many of us don’t even earn what’s deemed to be the ‘average wage’ so can be excused for being a little bit aggrieved by it all, at least the sun is shining lol.
Well said Andy Wood. You have expressed what a great many of us are feeling and experiencing. We hear from voluntary organisations and local sports clubs all struggling for funds that the newcomers have no affiliation or support for. Why would they? They have no roots in the area, no history and many, not all, but many, with no interest or sentimental attachment.
They are universally hideous and clearly designed by fans of Stalinist era state architecture.