One local gipsy family with two small children moved their mobile home onto land they have owned for decades from an overcrowded site where they were born at Lydia Park.

MP Jeremy Hunt and his Bramley bag carrier, Cllr Jane Austin, are bringing in the cavalry—Waverley enforcement officers, not just the police, Borough Commander Rob Brian no less, and probably the military—to deal with one little family.

Seemingly, they have just woken up to the fact that the site near Dunsfold Airfield is part of the parish of Bramley and is home to a huge community of travellers and homeless people from all over the world.  JH is a neighbour living just down the road in Markwick Lane, where he built a new house at Mares Pond.

But where have they been for the past four years, on Planet Zonk, WW wonders? Alfold & Dunsfold residents know precisely where their borough councillor, Kevin DAnus, has been for the past eight years at Surrey County Council, where he resides in its Executive cabinet. Presumably, rocking up at Waverley is a bit of a chore when the Tories are no longer in control.

Did they know that ‘Your Waverley’ is smarting from the problem it created for itself when four years ago, it wrote to all the Lydia Park and Newacres gipsy families asking them to seek more licences for their families? Families that have lived on sites they own for 40 years and where their children were born grew up and attended local schools. Sites ‘YW’ acknowledged where there was severe overcrowding!

As one former Waverley Council member recently told the WW,

 Developers have turned planning in Waverley into the Wild West without sheriffs.

If anyone wants an example of the Wild West, a trip down Stovolds Hill will enforce that statement. Because the hundreds of “tinnies” that have sprung up over the last three years are called – wait for it…

Yellowstone Park! 

and there are only two gipsies living  there. However, there are hundreds, yes hundreds of  homeless people from all over the world residing in row upon row of tin shacks.

We have been writing about sites like this and the Bramley petrol leak for years! But Jeremy, who lives just down the road in  Hascombe, has awoken suddenly. And presumably, so has his Bramley sidekick. 

This is just one of our posts in recent years, which includes a list of just a handful of the planning applications granted. Will Dunsfold and Bramley soon boast two new villages

In fairness to Waverley Planners, they are doing their utmost to determine the gipsy need in the borough, information which is required for their new Local Plan. Waverley and every other council in the country has a statutory duty to provide sufficient sites for gipsies in their areas.

Said JH – who we respectfully suggest should get his facts right before he bows to the mutter in the local gutter.

Over the course of this weekend I have been contacted by numerous local residents and councillors from all four Parishes of Hascombe, Alfold, Bramley and Dunsfold, all deeply frustrated and upset about the damage to this field.

The field hasn’t been damaged – the two accesses have existed for decades.  Any damage has been caused by fly-tipping and car dumping by every Dug and Doris in the area.

This field has been flattened by heavy machinery, and the topsoil has been stripped and pushed to one side. A new access has been created, a hedgerow removed, and trees chopped down. Hardcore / aggregate has been laid, and so far, one structure has been placed on-site, as per the photo.

The family owns the 20-acre field. No trees have been chopped down or hedgerows removed.

This land is adjacent to and overlooked by the Surrey Hills AONB, and it is designated as an Area of Great Landscape Value (AGLV). This is an agricultural field, so the work has been undertaken without permission and in breach of planning.

Wrong A planning application has been lodged.

The field has never been used for agriculture. It was part of the old WW2 airfield, as was Lydia Park, and still has the hardstandings where the Canadians were billeted. Several thousand people live in the AGLV in tin shacks and mobile homes, and the area around Dunsfold Park has been proposed for removal from AONB.

I have urgently contacted Claire Upton-Brown, Head of Planning at Waverley, and Borough Commander Rob Brian of Surrey Waverley Beat (Surrey Police) to request an update and urgent action.
I will keep you updated, Jeremy.

Please do – but get your facts right in the future, Mr Hunt, because careless talk can cost lives.

Near Neighbours have reliably informed us that the newcomers to Yellowstone Park and Weeping Willows are causing huge problems, and the area is like a tinderbox waiting to explode.