The Court of Appeal has ruled against NHS Property Services trying to prevent a cherished area of greenspace in Leatherhead – Leach Grove Wood – being given statutory protection from development. Local resident Flip Cargill and the Leatherhead Residents Association, supported by the Surrey Branch of CPRE, applied several years ago to register the common land close to Leatherhead Hospital as a ‘village green’ under the Commons Act 2006. Surrey County Council (SCC) agreed to register it, giving Leach Grove Wood protection under the law.
The Surrey Branch of CPRE is challenging the adoption by Waverley Borough Council of its Local Plan: Part 1 Strategic Policies and Sites. CPRE Surrey has launched this challenge on the grounds that the Planning Inspector who examined the draft Plan, Mr Jonathan Bore, “failed to take into account the environmental constraints and specifically the harm to the Surrey Hills Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB) and the London Metropolitan Green Belt”.
CPRE Surrey has welcomed the draft London Plan, published last week by London Mayor Sadiq Khan, and has called for local authorities in Surrey to revise their own Local Plans to take account of the Mayor’s proposals. CPRE, which is fighting to defend Green Belt countryside and green spaces threatened by development pressures in Surrey, believes that local councils outside London should emulate Mr Khan’s pledge to protect the Green Belt.
A new report commissioned by CPRE Surrey shows that the housing target of 590 houses per annum, 11,210 homes over the life of the emerging Local Plan to 2032, which is expected to be imposed on Waverley Borough Council as a result of the recent Planning Inspector’s Examination-in-Public, is overstated by at least 29%, equivalent to a total of 2,500 houses.
The Autumn 2017 issue of CPRE’s magazine Surrey Voice is out now, with news, views and comment from across Surrey. Copies can be obtained from our Leatherhead office and a pdf version can be downloaded here:
CPRE Surrey Branch opposes Guildford Borough Council’s plans for large-scale housing development in the countryside around Guildford and has expressed its dismay at the council’s proposals for “inappropriate urban extensions, large housing estates and widespread ‘insetting’ in Green Belt villages”. In its response to the consultation on GBC’s revised draft Local Plan, CPRE Surrey criticizes the council for its failure to give proper consideration to “the widespread and serious constraints on development within the borough” and says that councillors should be doing more to “protect and enhance the Green Belt” rather than undermining it.
The Spring 2017 issue of SURREY VOICE, the CPRE magazine for Surrey, is out now – with articles on the Guildford and Waverley local plans, the Housing White Paper, the Surrey Hills ‘Quiet Lane Zones’, the Woodland Trust’s WWI Centenary Wood, an update on the Elmbridge Sports Hub saga, and much more!
Mole Valley District Council is consulting on its draft Local Plan and is holding a series of public meetings and exhibitions around the district. CPRE is urging residents to take part by completing the Future Mole Valley online survey, and hopes that public opinion will steer the Council towards options that focus on regeneration of urban and brownfield sites rather than allowing housebuilding and other development to sprawl out into the countryside, the Green Belt and AONB.
