One thing all us Waverley taxpayers can rely upon is that our money is being spent by the council wisely! Isn’t it?
We can all sleep soundly in the knowledge that in return for an uplift in the value of Crest Nicholson’s/ Sainsbury’s development of £1.6m as the developers of the Brightwell Gostrey site in Farnham. for removing the old people’s centre from its East Street redevelopment plans,Waverley BC is only spending a mere £2.2m of our money on one of the ugliest extensions – we are sure someone will eventually give it a prize! – to the Farnham Memorial Hall within spitting distance of the town’s cherished Conservation area and on which it will have a significant impact.
Once Upon A Time…Crest Nicholson was going to contribute towards the cost of re-building the centrally placed and popular Gostrey Centre, but it is now believed Waverley now lives more in hope than expectation of that ever happening.
All sorts of shenanigans have been going on behind the scenes in recent years to ensure the Memorial Hall was the perfect place to move all the old people even though they loved their old site close to the town centre’s shops and supermarkets. After all we don’t want old people getting in the way of progress do we? They all agree they have been putting up with dreadful, even dangerous conditions, particularly in their kitchen which, only when threatened with Environmental Health intervention, was cleaned and given a lick of paint by the landlord (WBC).They were always promised a new Gostrey Centre centre within the East St development. and the council has still not made the decision to remove it from the Brightwells site, however by telling porkies – happens a lot at Waverley, they pretended the Brewery’s Deed of Gift doesn’t prevent it. Twice councillors were falsely advised the decision to move had been made in February and the leadership ensured that an extra £700,000 of funding was agreed so… on August 26 the joint planning committee granted consent without considering the visual impact on the town’s Conservation Area – no surprise there then.
Despite being gifted as a “Memorial” with sports changing rooms and the adjacent fields as recreation grounds for “sport” primarily for youth sporting and physical training purposes, particularly children in 1947 by the Lion Brewery in memory of some of their workers killed in the Great War, Waverley soon established that “Deeds of Covenant stating –“ for sporting use” only could “easily be changed.” Remember that Web readers “easily changed” and presumably you can equally easily extend a building onto recreational land, after all wasn’t the Memorial Hall “underused” and aren’t WBC the planning authority!
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