Develpment on a site once dubbed the most toxic site in Europe.

More bricks and tiles are coming to Cranleigh.

With planning consent for 19 homes in the pipeline, the owners of a controversial site in Knowle Lane Cranleigh want to change some conditions before building starts. 

Planning Application WA/2024/02152 – Valid From 06/11/2024

Residents around Cranleigh /Alfold/ Loxwood/Rudgwick/ Ewhurst/Horsham and beyond have fumed for almost a decade at the destruction of several of their major roads and cherished country lanes. Since 2016, work has been underway to clear the polluted site once owned by Steetley Chemicals in Knowle Lane. Now called Cranleigh Brick & Tile.
Now, after many years of cleaning up the site, the owners intend to build  19 dwellings and associated works after demolishibg existing buildings. Other works include footpaths remediation and restoration. The application was accompanied by an Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA.)
An application to vary condition of wa/2013/1947 ( approved plans numbers and documents)will allow alterations to the layout and design as well as accessand the layoutt to plots; alterations to turning heads and visitor parking;  and details of electric car chargers.

Since 2002, the site has been the subject of several failed planning applications in the open countryside. It is a former brickwork that once stored munitions and was used for chemical production by Steetley Chemicals.

In 2000, the Environment Agency (EA) declared it a Special Site due to the threat of pollution of Controlled Waters.

Situated less than two miles south-east of Cranleigh the site was identified as contaminated and its management taken over by the Environment Agency.  For the past ten years de-contamination has been taking place by specialist contractors.  Asbestos and lagoons of effluence have been removed as lorries have pounded heir way along lanes including Wildwood Lne onto the A281 Horsham/Guildford Road.

The Big lorry dash has begun! But you ain’t seen nothing yet!

TWA/2024/02152

The site has some existing ecology, assessed in 2013 as part of an original application, as the land was heavily contaminated with asbestos, cadmium, lead, and acids. Consequently, the approved restoration scheme has resulted in a significant uplift in the site’s ecological value.

 

 

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