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,andWhere-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!
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?
BECAUSE THEIR ACTIONS COULD HAVE A SERIOUSLY DAMAGING AFFECT ON US ALL!
It became increasingly apparent as the Dunsfold Park Inquiry progressed that the least public-spirited and responsible body in living local memory, PoW & the Parishes (routinely referred to as the Rule 6 Parties at the Inquiry), treat the question of housing as a game of cunning and conspiring.
To-day we received a comment from a follower that by even mentioning PoW we are giving it legitimacy! However, it is spreading such a web of lies, deceit and mis-information we MUST set the record straight and limit the damage it is doing to the Waverley borough.
We love PoW’s Sarah Sullivan’s artwork – but the message it conveys makes us want to SCREAM! Because the message it conveys is simply WRONG. Lorries and traffic will go through By-Pass Byham’s Bramley from Shoreham, from Gatwick from Horsham and all the new homes being built in Cranleigh and the villages – NOT JUST FROM DUNSFOLD!
This can only be because they and the majority of their supporters are insulated by comfortable levels of income and homes and have, at worst, completely forgotten and, at best, simply overlooked that their actions and objections affect the aspiration of young people to own their own homes and find jobs close to those homes. Surrey house prices are now 15x the national average and PoW and their acolytes need to recognise that much as they’d like to populate the villages with people in their own image, we can’t all be Captains of Industry!
We, at Waverley Web, never thought we’d be writing in praise of Julia Potts – the woman previously known as Gone-to-Potts – but it began to dawn on our Waverley-Watchers, as they witnessed the Borough gearing up for the now not-quite-so-daft looking Local Plan and the Dunsfold Park Inquiry, that under Councillor Potts, Waverley is galvanising.
For the first time, in a very long time, the Borough has a Leader who actually appears to be stepping up to the plate and forcing officers and councillors alike to face up to their housing responsibilities, rather than shirking them and trying to shove them onto other boroughs. This is a significant change from the shambolic, do-bugger-all politicks of Potts’ predecessors – Robert Knowless and Richard Shut-the-Gates!
There was a time – under Knowless & Shut-the-Gates – when putting the worried-well-to-do’s interests first came naturally to Waverley BC’s Leaders but in Councillor Potts we detect something of a sea change. Evidence of this is apparent in her and Liz-the-Biz’s willingness to bury the Council’s decade long differences with the Dunsfold Developer in order to bring forward a new village at Dunsfold Park in order to resolve a goodly part of the borough’s housing shortage.
A shortage that PoW & the Parishes – their backs against the wall – now suggest should be resolved by freeing up the Green Belt and green fields in and around their villages! Yep, you read it here first, if PoW & the Parishes get their way, hundreds of homes are coming to the villages of Alfold, Bramley, Busbridge, Dunsfold, Hambledon, Hascombe, Ifold, Loxwood & Plaistow.
Did the Parish Councils ask all 20,000 residents they claim to represent if they wanted to dish out their tax payer precept – rumoured to be around £6,000 per council – to pay for PoW’s barrister, planning and traffic experts.
Anyone who sat in the public gallery at The Burys during the first week of the Inquiry, when PoW & the Parishes’ – so-called – expert witnesses put their case, could tell PoW & the Parishes had been duped, sold a pup, a pig in a poke! In fact, if the Waverley Web was in PoW & the Parishes’ shoes, we’d be demanding our money back! Their witnesses conceded so many of their half-baked arguments under cross-examination by Rumpole and Wayne Beglan that we simply don’t have space or time in which to list them! As Rumpole so succinctly put it, the Rule 6 Parties’ case ‘unravelled’ and The Stinch’s closing submissions were ‘fantasy and fiction’!
Which brings us neatly to the latest mutter in the gutters of Godalming! Apparently, so reluctant were some of POW’s expert witnesses to work for them, they quoted 3x their normal fees in anticipation it would send PoW & the Parishes running for the Surrey Hills. Unfortunately – for the experts (and the Parishes’ coffers!) – the experts weren’t exactly lining up to align themselves with PoW so they had no option but to pay through the nose to get someone … anyone!
And, be warned, PoW’s about to circulate the begging bowl – again! Beverley Weddell, Clerk to Alfold Parish Council, sent a letter to the Secretary of State (SoS) on behalf of Alfold, Bramley, Busbridge, Dunsfold, Hambledon, Hascombe, Ifold, Loxwood & Plaistow Parish Councils and the PoW Campaign formally requesting the SoS to:
[NB PLEASE NOTE THREE OF THESE PARISH COUNCILS ARE IN WEST SUSSEX!]
1. direct Waverley BC submit their emerging Replacement Local Plan to him for his approval
2. or to modify their Local Plan
3. or withdraw the document.
In the meantime, they want him (the SoS) to give a temporary direction that Waverley BC does not take any further step with regards to the preparation of their Local Plan until the SoS has reached a decision on their request.
One regular reader of the Waverley Web wrote in this week saying they now believe that PoW’s posturing is an almighty scam on behalf of the cash-and-clout brigade who are openly boasting that as soon as the Dunsfold Park application is routed Waverley’s well-to-do will be coming forward with applications to build on their own green fields! You don’t say! Quelle surprise!
But enough column inches have been devoted to POW, led by Charles William Orange Esq (AKA OJ – strapline: The future’s bright, the future’s Orange!) and Nic-the-Brick Pidgeon (who has admitted in the dim and not so distant past to having a pecuniary interest in the Springbok planning application to build 425 homes in the village everyone refers to as AWfold).
More about Councillor Potts’ epiphany. We don’t want to speak too soon but we think we might be glimpsing a slow but sure change of direction from the Good Ship Waverley. The coming together of Councillor Potts and Liz-the-Biz and their apparent determination to do something to end the tyranny of a well-heeled minority who complain about anything being built within five miles of their In/Out drives and want to ban all cars – except their own – from the A281!
It could just be that in Councillor Potts we are finally seeing a local politician with the selflessness and vision to work in the interests of the wider borough, rather than just those of the cash-and-clout brigade from Awfold, CKerchingfold, Dudsfold and Where-Has-all-the-Traffic-Comb-Frome, who have, to their eternal shame, effectively, bullied and bought the submission of local MPs, Mistress Milton and Jeremy Shunt-all-the-housing onto someone else! More of which in a future post.
As a result, Waverley might, just might – but don’t hold your breath – emerge from the current situation in reasonably good shape!
We say ‘might’ because Councillor Potts and Liz-the-Biz are just two women and they’re up against some dark and very powerful forces who now want to build on green fields owned by them.
So there you have it, folks, if this Inspector and his boss, the Secretary of State, decide not to recommend in favour of the Dunsfold development, it’s going to be open season on every green field and piece of Green Belt land in the borough and the Coutts accounts of the cash-and-clout brigade will be going Ker-Ker-Kerching! No wonder they’re all so keen to derail housing at Dunsfold!
The final word on this has to go to that elder statesman of the three barristers at the recent Inquiry, Rumpole: “The very fact that the Rule 6 Parties speak in such terms shows what the planning system has to grapple with and face down here!”
See yesterday’s post – another shedload going onto a green field near YOU?
First shock of the day at the Alfold Public Inquiry!
Within ten minutes of a public inquiry opening, the appellant, Thakeham Homes, warns it intends to land all its costs into Waverley’s lap!
One thing you can say for Your Waverley it is on the ball!
Let’s hope it’s in the money too!
Picture posted on Facebook by Alfold Fights Back.
It is well-rounded, (51 of its 57 councillors are from one party) it bounces around all over the place, (two Daft Local Plans and one, not quite so Daft, over ten years). It had a rubber Band (Mike) at its heart for many years – don’t see much of him now though, and it bounces back into power regardless of how many times residents take ‘Votes of No Confidence’ in its administrative prowess … which are ignored!
So… WHY HAS IT WAITED UNTIL FIVE DAYS BEFORE A PUBLIC INQUIRY OPENS INTO A HUGE SCHEME TO MORE THAN DOUBLE THE SIZE OF THE TINY VILLAGE OF ALFOLD… TO EARMARK FUNDS TO FIGHT THE SCHEME AT APPEAL?
Last Tuesday’s meeting of the EXECUTIVE voted to provide its planning team with £100,000 for Barristers and Expert witnesses to challenge Thakeham Homes appeal against its refusal to allow a new village to be bolted onto the Surrey/Sussex Village.
When does the Appeal take place? TODAY!
Click on the link below for a previous post outlining the scheme to build 465 dwellings on the Springbok Estate in the middle of Waverley’s countryside on land owned by Seaman’s Charity Care Ashore on the Surrey/Sussex border.
So… ‘Your Waverley’ wait until seven days before a controversial Public Inquiry takes place before deciding whether to spend £100,000 of the taxpayers’ money! No doubt Thakeham Homes are laughing all the way to the Inspector’s door, as they will, no doubt, have gathered all the planning brains and experts available to ensure its cunning plan comes to fruition,
But maybe…just maybe, someone at ‘YW’ just forgot to set the money aside, and officers and legal eagles have been preparing for the event for many months? Let’s hope so.
Do the good people of Alfold go into battle confident and safe in the knowledge that its borough council is vigorously defending its very future, let’s hope so for their sake?
Your Waverley’s Councillor Jim Edwards was completely carried away with his own enthusiasm whilst supporting the £100,000 spend, even though he said there was no money in the council’s planning coffers! Waverley Planners refused the application in 2016. He said: We should apply to the Inspector for costs, because I don’t think they have a leg to stand on personally, knowing Alfold and I just hope we get costs!’
We hope you are right Sunny Jim, but don’t hold your breath!
There are some very angry people over there in the East – who want to know, WHY two major public inquiries are being held on the same day in different parts of the borough. Of course, we couldn’t possibly comment!
Inspector Bore made his views very clear at the end of the first week of his Inquiry into Waverley Borough Council’s now, not-quite-so-daft looking, Draft Local Plan. And he left no room for equivocation in that, given a choice between having a home and being stuck for a few more minutes in traffic on the A3, he knows what his choice – and the Government’s choice – will be!
Cue deeply indrawn breaths from all those present in the Waverley Council Chamber who are opposed to more development!
Inspector Bore also made it very clear that Waverley’s housing numbers will need to increase!
Cue another collective intake of breath from the anti-development-brigade, spear-headed by Protect Our Waverley (who else?!) and the Man from CPRE (well he would, wouldn’t he?!).
Inspector Bore indicated that Waverley does not have a five-year housing supplyand concurred with the view of a ‘housing forum’, made up of interested developers, that the Council simply cannot rely on a 100% achievement rate because, not only is that undeliverable but unreasonable.
Q: Why?
A: Because no one ever gets a score of 100 / 100. Ergo, Waverley’s housing numbers will have to go up.
Graham Parrott – looking as sick as one – gamely tabled a plan designed to demonstrate how constrained the borough of Waverley is in development terms but Inspector Bore was having none of it. He told the Chamber that Waverley was not nearly as constrained as either Guildford or Woking … Oh, and by the way, Waverley’s going to have to take 50% of Woking’s unmet need!
Forget indrawn breaths, at this point the POW collective nearly choked on theirs! Had they really heard that right? 50%? They thought they had enough to worry over where Waverley was planning to put its existing numbers and now they’re expected to take 50% of another borough’s unmet need! This was beyond their worst nightmares!
But Inspector Bore was in a benevolent mood; he assured those assembled in the Council Chamber that he wasn’t there to hinder them but to help them get their plan adopted. And, in order to help him to help them, the planners needed to go away and think about how and where they might accommodate their – and Woking’s – increased housing need.
Our spider, nearly strangled itself in its own web hanging from the public gallery as it frantically tried to do the arithmetic on the back of an envelope, as the day progressed, and reckoned, by the end of it, the numbers are going to be not far south of 600 per annum!
Had they been on hand this was the point that the stretchers would have been rushed into the Council Chamber … but Inspector Bore hadn’t finished. He had some hints, some helpful suggestions, as to how Waverley might go about opening their door to the developers and rolling out the red carpet. Elsewhere, he offered, planners had adopted a policy whereby they decided, all other things being equal, development would be acceptable if it was proposed adjacent to existing development …
It took a few moments for the import of his words to sink in but when they did the blood drained from the faces of those representing the Parish Councils and Protect Our Little Corner …
Was he really suggesting …? Did he honestly think …? Surely not …? He could not possibly mean …
Yep, they got there … eventually! The Inspector was giving Waverley Planners a prod in the ribs – and the Parish Councils and Protect Our Little Corner a massive punch in the gut!
He was actually daring to propose the previously unimaginable: that the villages – and, yes, that’s all of the villages (even the oh, so precious, we are an isolated rural idyll and therefore an exceptional case, villages of Alfold and Dunsfold, Shamley Green, Wonersh, Ewhurst, Elstead, Milford and on it goes around Farnham ) – will have to take more houses!
Yes, that means every last damn one of them – even the oh-so-precious, we are an isolated rural idyll and therefore an exceptional case villages of Alfold and Dunsfold! It means Alfold, Bramley, Busbridge, Chiddingfold, Compton, Cranleigh, Dunsfold, Enton, Ewhurst, Godalming, Hambledon, Hascombe, Hydestile, Milford, Munstead, Shalford, Witley, Wonersh and everywhere in between.
Not one of them is going to escape unscathed, untouched and any protestations about congestion on the A281 are, we have no doubt, going to be met with the same brisk rebuttal that was delivered with regard to congestion on the A3: both Inspector Bore and the Government consider delivering homes more important than a couple of minutes additional delay on the daily commute!
So, there you have it folks, unless someone, somewhere can pinpoint a large, empty, brownfield site that’s going begging – and, let’s face it, there aren’t too many of those around, are there? – all of the villages are going to have to take a far greater number of houses than they previously imagined – even in their worst nightmares! So much for Protect Our Little Corner’s dastardly plan to push it all onto Cranleigh and Farnham. It would appear to be blowing up in their faces for the Inspector has them in his sights.
Stand by your beds!!! In the Second World War they dug up the cricket pitches to plant vegetables … in 2018 they might be digging them up to pour concrete!
PS Our advice to local Councillors this week-end:
Take the landline off the hook, switch off your mobile phone and ignore your email because when Wild-of-Waverley gets wind of development on their doorstep they’re not going to be pleased. But it’s not Richard Shut-the-Gates, Robert Know-less and Mary Orton-Pett and all those Cranleigh Councillors who did/didn’t attend secret meetings – the architects of this developing disaster (no pun intended – oh, ok, maybe just a little one!) they’ll be ringing to berate. Oh no, they’re yesterday’s (wo)men. Between them that lot triumvirate have done untold damage to the Borough with their insistence that Waverley, on their watch, behave as if it were an island, a special case, a forbidden fruit where developers crossed the borough line at their peril. Now their chickens look as if they’re coming home to roost, thanks to all those Cranleigh councillors who did/didn’t attend those “secret meetings.” However, it’s not Shut-the-Gate, Know-less and Mrs MOP the residents will be ringing, its poor old – and those are words we never thought we’d hear ourselves say – Gone-to-Potts and that Dick D’Anus!
PPS Our advice to local would-be-developers:
Pull out those old plans to develop on greenfields and gardens, dust them off and totter down to the hallowed halls of The Burys where Liz-the-Biz-Simms and her planners will greet you with open arms – unfortunately, the red carpet’s not an option due to ‘elf and safety concerns … But never mind, there’s much to celebrate if you’re a would-be-developer in Waverley, cos there’s a Concrete Fest coming to a field, in a village, near all of us!
arithmetic on the back of an envelope, as the day progressed, and reckoned, by the end of it, the numbers are going to be not far south of