by admin | Jun 8, 2017 | Development, Green Fields, Waverley Borough Council
One of our Facebook friends asked us to post a map of all the development in Cranleigh to indicate to residents the true scale of our problem. Well here it is, hot off the Waverley Planning Maps website:
This only shows planning applications from 2011 onwards. You will no doubt recognise the mega site south of the High Street which totals 765 new dwellings alone! This includes Berkeley Homes 425 dwellings (spanning Knowle Lane to Alfold Road), Little Meadow (Alfold Road) 75 dwellings and the Knowle Park Initiative (A2 Dominion) 265 dwellings (Alfold Road as well!). We do not understand how Surrey Highways thinks the rural roads will cope, with the explosion of houses Waverley has planned for this area. and how they believe road safety will not be compromised.
Those of you also concerned about the sewage and foul water from all of these houses, will no doubt be astonished to learn, as we were last week at a meeting in Guildford with Thames Water, that no provision has yet been made for the expansion of the sewage treatment works on Elmbridge Road and no consideration has been given to the river into which the effluent flows. We have reported countless times that Cranleigh Waters now regularly dries up, yet apparently, according to the “experts” in their desktop studies, it can cope with double the number of houses, and double the amount of effluent being poured into it, yes another minimum of 4,455 new dwellings, without any pollution problems whatsoever!
Over the last couple of days, Residents have yet again been reporting to us more Thames Water contractor vans across the village (picture below opposite turning to Elm Park 5 June 2017).
Thames Water confirmed it had spent £1M on new filters to improve the sewage treatment works for EXISTING residents only, but as yet have not secured funding, or designed the sewage works for the new loos, showers, dishwashers, washing machines etc in the pipeline for 1,300 new houses in Cranleigh, let alone the 2, 600 (Local Plan figure) for Dunsfold or 600+ on the Springbok Estate. This is utter madness!! And yet still more applications pile up – another 98 on the primary school sites and another 101 in phase 2 for the Crest Nicholson site off the Horsham Road, which some of you may have attended the consultation in the village for. Does it end there? No of course not the numbers just keep growing, whilst the certain environmental damage on our doorstep is being firmly ignored.
What legacy is this Waverley Borough Council leaving to the next generation of residents in Cranleigh?
by admin | May 2, 2017 | Cranleigh Primary School, Development, infrastructure, Surrey County Council, Waverley Borough Council
Surrey County Council have submitted a planning application (ref SCC2017/0064 & WBC: WA/2017/0696) for a new Junior and Infant School at Glebelands in Cranleigh, and this was discussed at the Cranleigh Parish Council Planning meeting on 24 April 2017.
Having reviewed the application we at Cranleigh Civic Society have concerns regarding child safety.
It appears that with the new school building, the impact of having 3 schools in close proximity in the Glebelands area, and the dangers of hugely increased population of school children travelling to and from school, have not been addressed.
The current Church of England Infant School in Church Lane, has parking available that allows parents to park and walk their Infant school children to the safety of the Infant School premises.
There is no parking provision for parents in the proposed new infant School at Glebelands that will allow parents to ensure their children’s safe arrival at School.
As well as no parking provision for the younger children’s parents/guardians, there is also no extra drop-off area provision for the increased number of High School children.
The impact of the Dunsfold and Cranleigh development proposals could double the current numbers of children of Infant and High School age travelling to and from Glebelands School.
The lack of safety provision in the proposed application will put the new and existing school attendees at unacceptably high risk in many ways in the future while travelling to, from and arriving at school.
We believe that Surrey County Council & Waverley Borough Council both have a duty to properly address this serious issue to ensure child safety and we would be interested to hear how they will carry out their duty of care in ensuring the safe arrival and departure of the huge numbers of children that will attend the Schools at Glebelands in the future.
by admin | Apr 18, 2017 | Development, Waverley Borough Council
In a truly shocking revelation, we have discovered that Waverley is proposing to slash Cranleigh’s representation on the committee that decides all the big housing applications from four voting Cranleigh Councillors to just ONE to represent the whole of Cranleigh Village.
The only reason we can see for reducing Cranleigh’s representation by so much is so that Waverley can dump even more houses here.
We are calling a PUBLIC MEETING – THURSDAY 25th May 2017 at 7pm in the Village Hall for you to Have Your Say!
It is disgraceful that a council can act like this and treat residents with such contempt. They are relying on the apathy of Cranleigh residents to help them achieve their goal. Cranleigh has already seen a disproportionate and unfair number of planning permissions granted totalling 1,300 so far.
Waverley has allocated 1,520 here in the village in the first part of its local plan and is planning to dump 45% of its ENTIRE housing allocation, that’s 4,455 in and around Cranleigh.
THIS IS NOT PLANNING; IT IS MADNESS!
Now it seems that the Waverley Conservative Leadership want to stack the Joint Planning Committee in their favour, with people that don’t give a damn about what happens to Cranleigh, as long as it’s not in their backyard, making it much easier to dump even more houses here.
Cranleigh Village Meeting
ENOUGH IS ENOUGH! We are calling a public meeting in Cranleigh on:
THURSDAY 25th May 2017 at 7pm in the Village Hall
and we are inviting our 5 borough councillors. We want to ask them what they are doing to represent our views, and what they are doing for Cranleigh residents. We will also be asking you if you want to call for a vote of “No confidence” in the leadership of Waverley Borough Council.
We have heard that people living in other parts of the borough are laughing at us. “Why is Cranleigh not up in arms?” they say, “why aren’t they shouting in the street?” and “why are they accepting this housing dump without any fuss?”. They think you don’t care, and basically, they think Waverley can, and will do, whatever it wants in Cranleigh with absolutely no backlash.
It is time to shake off any apathy and stand up to be counted. Are you going to let them wreck Cranleigh completely?
This is the last opportunity to hold the Conservative Waverley leadership –“we can do whatever we like to Cranleigh” – to account and really show them what the people of Cranleigh think about their secret plans to expand Cranleigh into a major town in Waverley.
More to come…..
And don’t believe you have seen the end of huge planning applications in Cranleigh, Waverley want our Neighbourhood Plan Group, as you will see from Item 5 on the Parish Council Agenda for 20th April to find even more housing sites, employment sites, community sites and retail sites in and around the village. So, if you live near a green field and are breathing a sigh of relief because you think you’re safe, think again. You could soon have a huge housing estate, or industrial units next to you. If we do nothing, this will only be the beginning……………….
Join us in the Village Hall at 7pm on Thursday 25th May. Invite your family, neighbours and friends, because Cranleigh people are not going down without a fight!
WE WILL BE HEARD
Tell us what you think by adding your comments below.
by admin | Mar 28, 2017 | Development, Flooding, Green Fields, Housing, KPI, Secretary of State, Waverley Borough Council
As an update to this previous article, we have now been informed that the Secretary of State has not agreed to call in this application.
So, sadly that’s another 265 houses approved to be built in an unsustainable location.
Original article follows:
Following the decision two weeks ago by Waverley Borough Council to approve the building of 265 houses on another of Cranleigh’s green fields, Cranleigh Civic Society has written to DCLG (Department for Communities and Local Government) to ask for the application to be ‘called in’. If accepted, this will lead to an inquiry being held by the Secretary of State.
Our reasons for requesting a call in are:
- Cranleigh’s Parish Councillor Liz Townsend was denied a vote for this application, in place of the late Brian Ellis.
- The vote was 8 for and 8 against, with the deciding vote given by a Hindhead councillor.
- There were four missing members of the JPC who could have given their vote to one of the Cranleigh councillors in their place, but chose not to elect substitutes.
- The Planning Officers were not acting impartially, but appeared to be in favour of the developers.
- This application had previously been rejected and was just resubmitted without significant changes, so why was this allowed?
- We have uncovered the existence of asbestos cement water pipes which could pose a serious risk to public health and if this is to be fixed 30% of Cranleigh’s drinking water pipes will need to be dug up. If not resolved the danger from asbestos will be exacerbated by the extra water pressure from new homes.
- Why have the developers not been questioned about the illegal dredging of Cranleigh Waters carried out by a contractor at their request?
- The KPI site fails the sequential test, as there are other sites better suited to development which do not flood. There will be no subsidised affordable flood insurance from Flood Re as, since 1 January 2009, new homes should not be built on high flood risk areas.
- This application was submitted at the same time as an appeal against the refusal of the previous application, which in itself is odd.
For these reasons we have serious and valid concerns about the granting of this application and hope that the Secretary of State will agree with us.
by admin | Feb 25, 2017 | Cranleigh, Development, Housing, infrastructure
This Thursday, 2nd of March is the AGM of the Cranleigh Civic Society at the Band Room on Village Way at 7:30pm and never before have we been so much in need of your help. We have fought the good fight examining every detail of the huge number of houses planned and approved to be built in our village, only to be ignored and criticised by the borough council and other parties who stand to make huge financial gains.
In fact, they’ve openly said that nothing you or I say or do has any effect on the decisions they make about the quality, well-being and safety of existing resident’s lives. It seems we’re unimportant, compared to their desire to dump all the housing here despite the lack of infrastructure, thereby protecting Haslemere, Godalming and in the main Farnham.
Cranleigh only has 5 borough councillors, of which 2 have declared a pecuniary interest in development in Cranleigh, compared to the stronghold of 18 borough councillors for Farnham.
The dump on Cranleigh has only just begun, with this imbalance of power this will never stop.
Please join us now to take a stand against the outrageous abuse of this power and help us to keep up the fight for fair representation on the borough council and for fair recognition of the constraints of our rural roads, sewage treatment, public transport and the undermining of the character of our village.
This will not stop! Areas of farmland and woods have already been decimated but we must still fight on. We have irrefutable evidence of the extent of Cranleigh’s ageing asbestos cement drinking water pipes and no clear evidence that this is not a risk to our health, despite asking the Drinking Water Inspectorate several times to confirm this they have not done so. We have set up an online petition to ask our MP Anne Milton to help us find out what these asbestos pipes are doing to us and to our children.
We think we have a right to know, do you?
https://you.38degrees.org.uk/petitions/remove-asbestos-cement-drinking-water-pipes
We can also prove that the sewerage treatment works intends to pump out more and more pollution into our river, even though it is already polluted, and the Environment Agency is most likely going to roll over and play dead, and let them do this, whilst wildlife suffers and our environment suffers too. We need to continue to push Waverley on this point, even if ultimately it may lead to the law courts.
We’ll bring you right up to date on Thursday with the battles we are fighting and let you know how you can help us. And, never forget:
“Never believe that a few caring people can’t change the world. For, indeed, that’s all who ever have.”
Margaret Mead Anthropologist
by admin | Oct 4, 2016 | Conservation, Cranleigh, Development, Waverley Borough Council
Waverley Borough Council refused the application WA/2016/1544 on 29 September 2016 for the demolition of Windy Way on Cranleigh Common and the building of a block of 6 flats and two semi detached dwellings on the site.
The reasons given were in summary:
- Harm to the Conservation Area.
- Harm to neighbouring properties.
- Over development of the site.
- Proposed buildings out of keeping.
- Not a good use of the space.
You can read the refusal reasons in full here:
windy-way-refusal-29-09-16
Existing Bungalow
Replacement Block flats and Houses
Flats Side elevation (over 13m in height):
Houses (x2) Side Elevation (over 13m in height):
Position on plot:
