Our fields are saved – so far! And even the trees ……
At the Waverley borough Council Joint Planning meeting on 27th November the councillors and all others spoke well and represented every view. On balance they voted to say no to HC-One & CVHT‘s planning application – the 60 bed Care Home Application with 20 community beds and health workers’ accommodation block – for reasons of “over-development & traffic & against the Local Plan” – in essence we don’t want the field filled up and the traffic increased, but we do feel upset that their isn’t a viable way to bring beds back to Cranleigh now.
They also voted to say no to the housing on the 2 Cranleigh Primary School sites – 91 dwellings and the loss of many trees – reasons – “over-development, loss of trees, loss of village look and feel (we think)”.
They voted for the Knowle Country Park and its lake – this will go ahead and is nothing but an asset all the while it has a vibrant and caring management team – how the future will go remains to be seen but we are lucky – so long as we understand that a body of wild water is a dangerous place! We will witness digging to provide the lake, then planting on a mass scale. The Ancient Woodland is to be preserved too – yippee.
All the councillors and visiting speakers did their best for Cranleigh. If you follow this link you can read all the agenda pack and additional documents – here and the minutes will be published there as well.
As for the replacement Primary School project – this is not over at all. Surrey County Council Cabinet has already approved building the new school with nursery on fields that are currently Glebelands school’s. On December 18th their Planning and Scrutiny committee will look at this again. see here for details and watch same space for the agenda items and agenda pack.
Regarding the new Knowle Park housing estate, note that much of the woodland was ripped out and burnt in October / November 2015, shortly before the Waverley Planning Committee Councillors visiting the site prior to passing the planning application. Cranleigh Civic Society took photos of the slash and burn at the time, and these are still available to anyone who wants to see them. Once the new housing estate gets built, the bits of woodland left will be denuded quite quickly by the housing estate occupants and their dogs of the few remaining ground plants that constitute species diversity under the Wildlife and Countryside Act in assessing ancient woodland status. At the end of the day, it’s just another new Cranleigh housing estate with B road access.
It is sad that after decades of work by the Trust, the design of the proposed building is so awful – my first impression was that it looked like a prison, and subsequent tinkering with the elevations has done nothing to encourage me to change my mind. There is more than enough evidence showing how a well designed environment assists recovery and it is high time the needs of the people using the building are given precedence over profit.