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…

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!

View: POW Local Plan Press Release

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.

 

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?

Another shed-load of housing on its way to ‘Poor old Cranleigh?’