Action Group’s Key Coordinator Steps Down to Keep Husband Happy

Published on: 16 May, 2021
Updated on: 17 May, 2021

By Martin Giles

Helen Jefferies with her Dom Perignon.

Helen Jefferies, a founder of the Wisley Action Group [WAG], has stepped down after more than 20 years, but hopes to “lend a hand” if needed.

“I’ve decided to retire for a couple of reasons,” Mrs Jefferies said. “First, it’s a natural break between the previous plan and associated applications and the change of ownership and the new proposals for the site.”Second, now my husband has retired he has seen for himself how much time I spend on ‘village matters’, and he’s not happy for me to continue.”

Mrs Jefferies was among WAG’s key campaign co-ordinators in the defence of the open farmland at “Three Farms Meadows”, the former Wisley airfield,

The Ockham and Hatchford Residents Association [OHRA] have presented her with a magnum of Dom Perignon champagne and an engraved chopping board at an informal gathering on Wednesday (May 12).

WAG spokesman and committee member Tony Edwards said: “WAG is obviously sorry to be losing its key campaign coordinator. It takes a very special talent, limitless patience, and personal time to both read and comprehend the mountains of reports and papers associated with the ongoing defence of Three Farms Meadows.

“Helen had this down to a fine art, quickly pointing the finger at any anomalies and inconsistencies. She’ll be a hard act to follow.”

Responses to Action Group’s Key Coordinator Steps Down to Keep Husband Happy

Adam Aaronson Reply

May 16, 2021 at 6:59 pm

Helen Jeffries has done an excellent job at the Wisley Action Group and if it weren’t for the sterling work she and her colleagues have undertaken, the bulldozers would have been in long ago.

It really is extraordinary that to date nobody has given a satisfactory reason why Wisley Airfield was put back into the Local Plan.

32,000 objections, turned down by the planning committee, appeal dismissed by the Secretary of State who said “It is agreed that the proposals constitute inappropriate development in the Green Belt” and yet it just popped back into the Local Plan for development as if it never happened.

And then along came Taylor Wimpey who presumably paid the secretive Wisley Property Investments Limited a whopping price for the land. Why would you buy such a controversial site that had just been emphatically turned down on green belt and other grounds, by the Secretary of State?

No Conservative GBC councillors, past and present, who pushed this through, have given a credible account as to why Wisley Airfield remained in the Local Plan. Now that we have been discovering how some of our politicians, including a former prime minister, conduct business by text, one is left wondering if they were any secret arrangements and if so who promised what to whom?

Perhaps there should be a public enquiry?