Formal investigations have been launched against 14 Waverley Borough Councillors – and the list is growing by the day!
The council’s monitoring officer Herr Taylor has been investigating complaints, ‘we have ways and means of making you talk,’ the council’s standards panel heard recently. Some are still being investigated, including those against borough and parish councillors
Some have been accused of not disclosure of pecuniary interests which mean they were not in a position to make unbiased decisions!
However, the most common allegation levelled against Waverley councillors is their failure to “treat others with respect,”with the majority of complaints coming from one councillor against another, either verbally or in e-mails, or comments posted online. No prizes offered by the Waverley Web for guessing who this is?
Mr Taylor said,“electronic communications can be treated, and widely transmitted in just a few moments and then read and shared with an audience the original author may not have intended. This combined with the absence of tone of voice and context makes electronic communications far more likely to lead to complaints, than any other form, especially when sent in haste.”
Independent Investigators – are currently looking into three of the most severe allegations.
The Chairman of the Standards Board, Councillor Michael Goodridge, who prides himself on never having to stand in an election in his Wonersh ward, and regularly falls asleep during council meetings, doesn’t believe there is a problem at ‘Your Waverley.’ Surprise, surprise!
But then he can always be relied upon to sweep almost every Waverley wrongdoing under Waverley Tower’s carpets!
Our spiders are finding it difficult to find enough space to breathe under them, let alone procreate and increase our little band of arachnids.
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?
Here are just a few of the fifteen, and counting, empty or closing, retail outlets in Farnham.
But worry not!- Soon there will be lots of new ones to take their place and all funded by the county and borough councils. Happy days! Because quite soon we will ALL be paying more council tax! And, there are suggestions that Waverley’s ‘high worth individuals could pay even more.’
HasMichael Blower, a former Waverley Mayor, borough Councillor, highly respected Farnham architect and a former partner of Guildford’s Scott, Brownrigg & Turner, devised a scheme that could bring about a volte-face to the presently proposed town redevelopment?
Here’s a Press Release posted to-day! Looks bland and insignificant enough, doesn’t it? Well, that’s what ‘YW’ hopes we will all think.
Except, here at the Waverley Web, we dug a little deeper and have discovered the sh*t is hitting ‘YW’s fan with a vengeance because it has duped its own unsuspecting councillors, it’s residents and possibly even some of it’s officers with information contained in its air quality monitoring procedure.
No problem there then, unless you happen to have asthma, respiratory problems, or any other health problems that are acerbated by filthy and polluted air!
What you may ask is the latest little cover-up all about?
Suffice to say the council has been burying/concealing it’s Air Quality Report for Farnham for around 18 months – and there we were dopey old Farnham residents believing our air quality issues were not as bad as we first thought. Because that’s what we were told. Waverley have AQR reports up until 2015 only.
It doesn’t say anything in the Press Release that the council held an Emergency Meeting, because of course it either wasn’t webcast, or if it was, the webcast wasn’t working. Even if it was working, we wouldn’t have heard anything, because they don’t intend us too. Because we’re the voting fodder, and secrecy is endemic at ‘YW’.
It also begs the question? Can we believe anything we hear, like the flood risk assessments, highway assessments, noise and pollution assessments that are carried out in our borough?
The Bias Factor is a technically term for extrapolating the results from these monitoring stations and tubes accounting for temperature and how that affects to NO2 calculation.
