FINISHED FLOOR LEVEL – Otherwise know in Cranleigh as F**k the Flood Levels!

 What high manhole covers the Berkeley Bunnies are installing on their site in Knowle Lane, Cranleigh!

An eagle-eyed resident who took this photo forwarded it to the Waverley Web as they couldn’t quite believe what they were seeing. ‘Surely, this must just be a positioning exercise?’ was the question they posed. One of our many Cranleigh correspondents wasn’t so sure and, after diligently checking the planning application came back and said, ‘Nope! What you see is what you get’!

Bluntly, both Berkeley Homes and Waverley planners knew that the Knowle Lane site wasn’t sustainable under the sequential test but they pushed it through anyway and the manhole covers will need to be this high above ground level in an effort to avoid flooding.

Few Cranleigh residents will forget the flooding in these fields – and elsewhere in Cranleigh – during the heavy floods of December 2013. But neither the Berkeley Bunnies nor  Waverley Planners care because they won’t be living in the houses the next time Cranleigh Floods.

Have we heard a peep out of POW about the ‘sustainability’ of this development? Not bloody likely? 
Where were POW when Cranleigh residents were fighting, tooth and nail to oppose development on a site that, in addition to flooding, is on a narrow country lane, betwixt and between the rear entrances to Sainsbury’s and Marks & Sparks – both of whom receive daily deliveries from HGVs – and a business, called Kerbside – which does what it says on the tin! – causing traffic chaos.

Not to mention CVNT’s (Cranleigh Village Nursing Home Trust’s) plans to build a private nursing home with a 28 flat apartment block adjacent to it, just a hop, skip and a field away across the lane?

If ever a development was unsustainable – one of POW’s favourite refrains – it was this one!

But, despite its name – Protect our Waverley – the only part of Waverley Capt’n Bob and his cohorts are interested in protecting is their own little corner, over there in Dunsfold. They really couldn’t give a damn if the good folks of Cranleigh see their furniture floating down the High Street as, memorably, happened in the great floods of 1968 … Nik Pigeon and Chris Britton hope to have sold their houses and wiped the dust of Waverley off their boots by then and Capt’n Bob, like Noah, will sail serenely on with Stacey Strumpett & Cliff Clavin on the Good Ship POW!

What a crock of crap poor old Cranleigh is sitting on thanks to the greed of the Berkeley Bunnies, the stupidity of Waverley Planners and the selfishness of POW and its supporters!

We simply console ourselves with the thought that what goes around, comes around and, talking of crap, just how is Awfold going to cope with the affluent’s effluent emanating from Thakeham Homes’ scheme at Springbok? No doubt bosom buddies Betty Ames, Chris Britton, Nik Pigeon, & Crystal Tipps Weddell have all the answers! And we just can’t wait to hear them … we could do with a good laugh in face of the latest crisis in Cranleigh!

And, we thought we had it bad over here in Farnham – beginning to make Crest Nicholson look like Mary Poppins.