Twas the night before Christmas, and all through the airfield, not a crane was moving nor a dumper truck on site.
Christmas has come early for the thousands who opposed development at Dunsfold Park. If the rumours seeping out of Waverley Borough Council are to be believed, the former aerodrome has been unceremoniously Dumped from Waverley’s housing allocation numbers. Its owners, Trinity College Cambridge, have informed the planners that they are mothballing the site!
Has anyone told, “Angela, I’m going to build 1.5m new homes?” WW wonders?
Judging by this link outlining Waverley Council’s new housing land supply position, the largest downfield site in the borough has been consigned to the trash bin. Leaving it with a miserable. 2.68 years of deliverable housing between the years of 2024 and 2029. https://www.waverley.gov.uk/Services/Planning-and-building/Planning-strategies-and-policies/Housing-supply-and-delivery
In the meantime, the Waverley Web wishes our readers and all those developers who submitted proposals to ‘Your Waverley’ in its ‘call for sites’ a happy Christmas and a prosperous New Year.
We are now signing out… Goodnight!
Ye Gads!
So where does this leave villages like Alfold, directly affected, right next door?
And why does Waverley council continue to fail so miserably to put a longterm housing plan in place that respects our countryside biodiversity, respects our village lifestyles, understands our lack of infrastructure, and respects our diversity of residents by not forcing hundreds and hundreds of developments, sneakily weaselled through the planning inspectorate against the wishes of everybody?
A sad day indeed!
cWhere does it leave Alfold – up the creek with no paddle it would seem. However, wasn’t your parish council partially responsible for funnelling funds for Protect Our Waverley, which was in fact Protect us from Dunsfold! Delaying the development for years. Be careful what you wish for Little Britton – chairman of Alfold Planning.
It seems there is so much more to this failure than a greedy landowner or an inept Council. What’s the issue with this site, is there an environmental issue?
And this is why developers should have conditions stating work must begin within 3 years of permission being granted and completed within a specified timeline depending on the size of the site. Land banking should be made an offence with large fines attached
Did Trinity’s Planning Permission get extended once they put in their Spine Road? If they did then that was foolish of WBC planners to accept that as clearly there was no intention to commence works… and clearly it should not contribute to the 5yr supply.
Milford Golf Course is likewise not going to be built despite their 5 yr extension to their planning permission a year ago as they commenced work enough to fool WBC planners and then promptly covered up the trench and abandoned the site. Stretton will bleat that they can’t build because of their court action – in which case the granting of an extension upon ‘commencement’ was given under false pretences.
The elephant in the field is the national population growth and huge quotas demanded to meet the so called crisis of “housing supply”, yet evidently Trinity believe they can’t sell their houses in Waverley, and those new developments swamping the Borough appear not to be selling like hot cakes, and certainly the supply is not meeting the need for homes for locals at the lower end of the market. Granting permission just because of the pointless “affordable” sop has made social housing provision drop like a stone.
You are absolutely right. Perhaps you should have a word with Aunty Angela.
The trouble with Dunsfold Park is the lack of adequate road and rail and water infrastructure and a contaminated site. A key consideration is also whether there would be sufficient interest from home buyers. The Waverley Local Plan has for almost decades assumed that it would be developed as a means of restricting the number of housing developments around Farnham, Haslemere, and Godalming.
Developers like Trinity know much better than Waverley BC the financial assessment as to whether a development should be carried out. Why would Waverley BC be able to build AND SELL homes within say a decade without making large losses if a developer has decided that the site is not appropriate at present?
Maybe it is a site for 20 years time but let’s wait to make that decision later.
WW will have a bet with you. When the time is right it is our guess the largest brownfield site – with an extant planning consent will be sold off to the highest bidder. In the meantime homes will be built in the countryside on a field near you! Or anyone else in Waverley.
I know it is the Season to be Jolly and all that… But REALLY as I have said so many times “Eggs and Basket…..”
The rest of the Borough Voted for Dunsfold Park Development so that Housing could all be deposited in the least accessible part of the Borough, with the smallest number of Voting Fodder to gainsay it and now it has come to Bite them all on the Nethers, and we will all pay the price..
Anyone remember the FOUR Scenarios that WBC Consulted the residents with back in 2014??
SCENARIO 1 SCENARIO 2 SCENARIO 3 SCENARIO 4
New Homes New Homes New Homes New Homes
DUNSFOLD PK 0 1800 2600 3400
FARNHAM 2700 1500 1000 700
GODALMING 100 100 100 100
CRANLEIGH 1450 850 700 300
HASLEMERE 200 200 100 100
LARGE VILLAGES *1 450 450 400 300
SMALL VILLAGES *2 150 150 150 150
TOTALS 5050 5050 5050 5050
*1 Witley, Milford, Bramley, Chiddingfold, Elstead
*2 Alfold, Churt, Dunsfold, Ewhurst, Frensham, Shamley Green, Tilford, Wonersh
Even when there was the slightest hope of Dunsfold Park going ahead, it did NOT stop Alfold taking well in excess of the 150 Total Figure for Small Villages, even though the allocation was later increased to 125 for Alfold (min) in fact as we saw with the many Appeal Decisions that were granted DUE TO DUNSFOLD PARK and the supposed Infrastructure they were supposed to offer the Eastern Villages. Now we simply have Over development and no benefits for the Villages.
In the Year 2021-22 WBC Monitoring Stats Alfold was granted the Highest of all the Villages/Towns in the Borough with 190 New Homes. In 2019-20 the figure was a mere 147 for our Village.
Who knows what plans Trinity College have for the Site, but a Garden Village in the middle of the countryside with no proper Transport Infrastructure would have resulted in a Commuter Estate heavily reliant on cars.
Maybe they simply want a Huge R&D and Business Park, far less hassle and less stress with the Contamination of the site (and the odd bit of left-over Munitions…)
Maybe Waverley need to come up with a List of all GREY-BELT land within the Greenbelt and work out if the numbers can be made to stack up elsewhere in the Borough.
HAPPY CHRISTMAS WAVERLEY
The promised infrastructure was a bit of road upgrading in Bramley and Shalford and new roundabout on the A281. How’s everyone loving that new roundabout…. does it make any difference to the lives of Alfold residents?
Where are the reservoirs and sewage treatment works being located? These plans must have been borrowed from Joseph Stalin, never mind the quality all that matters is the quantity.
Waverley’s biggest problem, which they seem to have chosen to ignore ever since they first granted consent for this development, is the very obvious fact that they have yet to find many sizeable residential developers brave enough to take on the building of hundreds of houses each on a rural site. If they did build the houses they would all be in direct competition with each other to sell their product.
Don’t get me started on Waverley’s manipulation of their need to charge Community Infrastucture Levy until AFTER they had granted consent for 1,800 houses constituting (by my maths) a gift to the developers of well in excess of £20-£30m and an eventual loss to us as payers of council taxes?!
Even worse is that Waverley have the highest CIL in the country for small developers (1-10 units) – they essentially let the developers of Dunsfold off CIL (the development that needed it the most in the borough) in order to make the scheme viable and chose to hammer all the small developers instead.