The Summer 2018 issue of Surrey Voice, the CPRE Surrey members’ magazine, is out now – with all the latest news and views about CPRE’s work to defend Surrey’s countryside and Green Belt.
The annual general meeting of CPRE Surrey Branch will take place at Tyrrells Wood Golf Club, The Drive, Leatherhead KT22 8QP on Tuesday 3rd July 2018, starting at 6.30pm. The guest speaker will be Christine Drury, Chair of CPRE Kent, who will speak on The North Downs Way: 40 Years of the National Trail.
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.
