The (Local CPRE has repeatedly said it is against ANY development at Dunsfold Aerodrome.
However, here is its latest country-wide view on where homes should be built first!
Tag: Dunsfold Park
Leading Tory says Farnham appeals will be rejected? But a big question mark hangs over whether or not POW will seek a judicial review!
Confidence voiced that appeals will be rejected
WAVERLEY’S new portfolio holder for planning has expressed confidence Farnham’s Neighbourhood Plan will “kill” five upcoming appeals for more than 500 homes in the town area, despite councillors agreeing Waverley’s new higher housing target this week.
Christopher Storey, the Tory councillor for Weybourne and Badshot Lea, took over the reigns as Waverley’s executive member for planning from Brian Adams this month and has been immediately thrown in the deep end – presiding over key landmarks in the development of the borough’s Local Plan and Farnham’s Brightwells redevelopment.
Last week Waverley invited members of the press to a briefing on the Local Plan, just weeks after a government planning inspector declared Waverley’s planning blueprint “sound” subject to a series of major modifications including raising the borough’s housing target to 590 homes per year.
This includes an additional allocation of 450 homes in Farnham, on top of the 2,330 already proposed over the plan period up to 2032, forcing an early review of Farnham’s own Neighbourhood Plan, adopted just last July, to find new housing sites.
Responding, architect of the town plan, town council leader Carole Cockburn told the Farnham Herald the inspector’s decision represented a “cruel blow” to the community-led planning document and the 10,000-plus people who voted for the plan in a referendum last April.
However, Mr Storey took a different stance to Mrs Cockburn, echoing inspector Jonathan Bore’s comments that: “These changes [to the Local Plan] will not diminish the importance or relevance of the work carried out to produce the Neighbourhood Plan, which will remain part of the statutory development plan.”
Addressing specifically five pending appeals for more than 500 homes spread across sites in Waverley Lane, Monkton Lane, Lower Weybourne Lane, Folly Hill and behind Farnham Park Hotel in Hale Road, Mr Storey added: “I am very confident that the Neighbourhood Plan and the Local Plan will kill all five of those.”
His comments came just a day before 11th-hour protests failed to force a rethink last Tuesday, and the new higher housing target of building 590 homes a year in 14 years was agreed by Waverley Borough Council.
Following a special executive meeting at 5pm, 41 members of the full council meeting at 7pm voted in favour of the inspector’s changes to part one of Waverley’s local plan in order to speed up its adoption and “take back control” from speculative property developers.
Farnham Residents opposition leader Jerry Hyman was a lone objector, again arguing there was insufficient evidence for the mitigation measures proposed to protect the borough’s Special Protection Areas, while councillors Andy MacLeod (Farnham Residents), Kevin Deanus (Alfold, Tory) and Paul Follows (Godalming, Lib Dem) abstained.
Responding to a last-minute challenge by Protect Our Waverley (POW) campaign that last wek’s decision was unlawful, because the council had potentially breached its constitution by holding the local plan meetings too close together, Waverley leader Julia Potts (Upper Hale, Tory) said it would be “very disappointing” if POW pursued its challenge.
“Waverley can proceed provided it is aware of the risk of challenge,” she said.
POW had previously called on all borough councillors to defer a decision on whether to approve the modified local plan, until the appeal decision on whether 1,800 houses can be built at Dunsfold Park – which has been allocated 2,600 new homes in the local plan. The verdict is due by March 31.
Taken from the Farnham Herald.
However, nobody dares to mention what if… The Dunsfold Aerodrome application is refused by the Secretary of State!
Result: One great big black hole in the Local Plan and one great big green hole in the borough of Waverley?
Is someone going to ask the Pope if they should be allowed to build at Dunsfold?
AFTER ALL, THEY’VE ASKED EVERYBODY ELSE!
BETTER LATE THAN NEVER …
We’ve all heard the old adage ‘he thinks all his Christmases have come at once’! If the Secretary of State doesn’t pull his finger out of the proverbial, that could be the verdict for the Flying Scotsman – always assuming, that is, Sajid Javid makes a positive decision when he finally gets around to making it!
Here at the Waverley Web we wonder – is there anyone who hasn’t commented?
Our moles – both within Waverley Borough Council and PoW (and, no, the PoW mole doesn’t know s/he’s a mole, s/he’s just too trusting of his / her intimates!) – that the Ministry of Housing, Communities, and Local Government has written, this week, to ‘Your Waverley’ – copies to every Tom, Dick & Harriet who have expressed a passing interest in the decision – except of course, His Holiness.
Saying: “The Secretary of State is considering the report of the Inspector, Philip Major who held a public local inquiry from 18 July 2017 into the [Dunsfold Park] planning application … [and he] takes the view that the recently published Report on the Examination of the Waverley Borough Local Plan Part 1 and the associated Final Schedule of Main Modifications include new information which may be material to the application before him.” The upshot being that “The Secretary of State considers that a period of two weeks to submit representations is reasonable in the circumstances of this case” and arising from that he “considers that he will not be in a position to reach a decision on the application by 15 March, as previously notified … he will now issue his decision on or before 31 March 2018.”
How long does it take one man and his army to make a decision that’s as plain as the nose on his face?! It’s like pulling teeth trying to get a decision out of the Ministry of Housing! No wonder there’s a chronic shortage of housing in this country if they keep putting off making a decision.
In other democratic countries, the application would have been issued in half the time and 1,800 houses would have been built and occupied! But here in the UK, where every mouse, bat, and bullfrog has to be consulted – – it’s taken 10 years and counting … so what’s another three months here and two weeks there …?
We’ve heard that PoW is having a pow-wow as we type, taking “the opportunity to submit further written representations ”because it “affects the case [they] put to the Inspector at the inquiry.”
We can just see it now, winging its way over the ether:
Dear Mr. Jewell
Inspector Jonathan Bore has surprised no-one – least of all us! – by the conclusions reached in his report on the Waverley Local Plan Part 1; he has not wavered (no pun intended!) from the position he took during the Public Examination last summer when he unjustifiably ‘talked up’ the housing need target to the unsustainable level of 590 dwellings per year. Waverley Borough Council, to their detriment and shame, did not challenge that at the time or subsequently, and the result is a Plan which blights every part of the Borough but especially our corner of it.
Once again, local opinion has been ridden roughshod over and ignored. Neighbourhood Plans seem to count for nothing and the most unsustainable site for development, Dunsfold Aerodrome, has been elevated to almost ‘holy grail’ status by Mr. Bore. The report, which in its own words correctly states that it is strategic, has none the less placed a disproportionate reliance on this single, remote site for delivery of the unsustainable quantity of homes to be built in the Borough over the Plan period.
Mr. Bore talks at length about his own assessment of the environmental and transport credentials of Dunsfold Aerodrome, without the benefit of the full evidence properly being considered in the separate Call In Inquiry, the conclusion of which was not expected to be announced by the Secretary of State until 15th March. At the same time, Waverley Borough Council has proposed handling a ‘free gift’ worth between £10m and £16m to the owners of Dunsfold Aerodrome by exempting them from all-important Community Infrastructure Levy – money the whole borough desperately needs and would benefit from.
POW believes the residents of Waverley – and especially the residents of Awfold and Duncefold – deserve better!
Yours sincerely
Bob Lies
Chairman of the Campaign
Protect our Waverley Campaign
… is a group formed to campaign against the development of Dunsfold Park New Town on the Dunsfold Airfield and other un-sustainable planning applications throughout the Borough of Waverley – not that we can be bothered to do or say anything about applications in the rest of the Borough because we only really, truly, madly, deeply care about Awfold, Duncefold, Ker-Chiddingfold and Where-Has-All-the-Traffic-Come-From… Horsham? But we’ve been told it’s not PC to let the people of Cranleigh, Godalming, and Farnham think we don’t give a Donald Duck about them!
Now, dear readers, once you’ve picked yourself up off the floor, where you’ve no doubt been rolling, and wiped the tears from your eyes, we’ll break it to you gently … we didn’t make that letter up – well, OK, we might have used a touch of poetic licence describing POW and its supporters, but the rest is a reproduction its latest Press Release, written in a fit of pique when Inspector Bore’s Report was published.
Seriously, folks, we couldn’t have made that up if we’d tried. Yeah, we’re tongue in cheek and on a good day we can be funny but that was hysterical … all the more so because they actually believe their own PR! And… if they don’t get their own way they will…do what Violet Elizabeth Bob did and they will…
Oh dear! Is Protect Our Little Corner of Waverley having a nervous breakdown?
With depressing predictability, Protect our Little Corner of Waverley has reacted with fury to Inspector Jonathan Bore’s conclusion that Dunsfold Aerodrome is Waverley’s best hope of meeting its housing need. It is his view that Dunsfold is a strategic site and will lessen the need to concrete over our green fields creating unnecessary and unwanted over-expansion of the borough’s three main towns, Cranleigh, Godalming and Farnham.
A disparaging Press Release issued on Tuesday makes a number of choice remarks from which we have cherry-picked the best to save those of you who are heartily sick of reading PoW’s self-centered, let’s protect the villages of Awfold, Duncfold, You-have-to-be-Kiddingfold, and Where-Has-all-the-traffic-combe-from and bugger Cranleigh, Godalawfulming, and the borough’s largest town of Farnham that has now become a brownfield site because ‘Your Waverley’ has thrown so much sh*t at it!
How Now Says POW?
Violet Elizabeth ‘Bob (Lees) – I’ll scream and I’ll scream til I’m sick!
‘Inspector Jonathan Bore has surprised no-one …’
‘… he unjustifiably ‘talked up’ the housing need target to the unsustainable level of 590 dwellings per year.’
‘Once again, local opinion has been ridden roughshod over and ignored … and the most unsustainable site for development, Dunsfold Aerodrome, has been elevated to ‘holy grail’ status by Mr. Bore.’
‘POW believes the residents of Waverley deserve better.’
Oh no, they don’t! What they really believe is the residents of the aforementioned Awfold, Duncfold, You-have-to-be-Kiddingfold, and Where-Has-all-the-traffic-combe-from deserve better! They don’t give a damn about the rest of the borough as long as their own backyards are protected!
Never mind that Cranleigh already has 1,300 homes consented, more in the pipeline and that Farnham is already grid-locked!
Where was POw when Waverley Planners was handing out planning consents on greenfields like Smarties? Nowhere! That’s where. They were too busy handing round the begging bowl to build a war chest to fight the Dunsfold Developer and fill Mistress Milton and Jeremy Shunt’s coffers in order to ensure they did their dirty work in the corridors of power, thus ensuring the application was called in.
And… exactly what good has that done? None whatsoever, quite the reverse in fact. It led to Waverley Borough Council having to spend a shed-load of money it could ill afford to defend their position at Public Inquiry and Betty Boop (the woman formerly known as Liz the Biz) running around like a headless chicken, rubber stamping planning permissions faster than developers could print them off! So frit was BB that housing at Dunsfold was going to disappear, like Scotch Mist, that she granted consents to the Berkeley Bunnies and the Lettuce King to build over 800 houses in Cranleigh on land that everyone knows – floods!
Waverley Web believes the residents of Cranleigh deserve better, and so do our residents here in Farnham.
PS. For those of you who can stomach POW’s crocodile tears for the residents of Waverley, herewith a link to their latest Huffing and Puffing that even the Flying Scotsman couldn’t match!
An Inspector calls, time … for Part 1 of the Local Plan.
We thought we would provide our followers with a few little tidbits from the Inspector Report on the Examination of Part 1 of Waverley’s Local Plan. A plan, long in the making, prepared with blood, sweat, and a few resignations, that will guide development in the borough through to the year 2032.
Government Inspector Mr. Jonathan Bore, found that: Waverley’s initial Plan that provided for a meager 9,861 additional homes from 2013 to 2032, did not take account of the latest housing projections so this would now be raised to ‘a minimum of 11,210. This would meet the unmet need, of other borough’s including 50% of Woking’s and those of the Wandsworth & Wimbledon Wanderers!
Waverley had previously made no allowance for accommodating part of London or Woking’s unmet housing requirement.
Why should it?
Because The Inspector says, Guildford & Woking are surrounded by Green Belt, and Waverley is – “significantly less constrained,’ particularly in the East of the borough including Cranleigh. Waverley is also the third most expensive local authority region in England outside London.
Well, they are now!
The Inspector states that: “Whilst the Dunsfold Aerodrome site did not match all the criteria,’ …
‘Do we hear a huge sigh of relief from the anti’s? Including The Protect Our Waverley, or perhaps just our little corner, sod Farnham and the rest of the borough!
Is there a glimmer of hope e hear them cry? A Judicial Review perhaps? A National Heritage order, what about newts, gnats, perhaps the odd Dunsfold Dodo or Alfold Albatross? Or the greater spotted Ames Bat? Anything, just anything? Or, of course, we could always resort to asking our Annie to get her whip out again?
We digress! This is serious stuff folks!
The Inspector says in his report… that if Dunsfold was not developed additional housing would be required in Farnham and Haslemere, and on greenfield sites elsewhere in the borough, in and around all the major towns, including Cranleigh, because of course he now recognises that with over 2,000 permission in the concrete mixer it is now Waverley’s fifth town! He also, says he doesn’t want to see too much Green Belt sacrificed.
Phew! that’s s relief – WW thought for a moment developers would start building in the Flying Scotsmsn’s nest around Winterfold!
This section is taken from the Inspector’s report – just in case you thought we were producing fake news!
What’s more… ‘as regards Dunsfold Aerodrome, the aim of re-using land that has previously been developed is one of the National Planning Policy Framework’s core planning principles.’
What have we been winding on about on this site since weaving this spider’s web?