GBC Admits Collaborating with Property Developers on SCC Letter Backing Wisley ‘Garden Village’ Bid

Published on: 8 Apr, 2019
Updated on: 8 Apr, 2019

A letter written by agents of property developers was presented as a letter of support from one council leader to another, a Freedom of Information report has revealed. The support was being shown for a major “garden village” development at the former Wisley Airfield site.

But the head of planning at GBC, Tracey Coleman, is defending her department’s collaboration with the property developers. This afternoon (April 8), in a statement issued by GBC she said: “In order to submit the bid, and as required by the government, the council worked collaboratively with relevant stakeholders, Surrey County Council and Wisley Property Investments Ltd.

“The council and Savills (on behalf of Wisley Property Investments) worked together to agree and produce a draft text for supporting a garden village, for onward use by stakeholders.

“Like all proposed sites, Wisley Airfield will still be subject to the usual planning application process, with or without garden village status.”

Extract of the Freedom of Information report showing Savills to be the originators of the letter of Support to GBC sent by former SCC council leader David Hodge.

The level of collaboration was not made known during the confrontational debate on the subject held with just 24 hours’ notice in October.  At the time, Cllr Tony Rooth (Ind, Pilgrims) said: “I feel that this matter has been dealt with in not an open and transparent way.”

The degree of Savills’ involvement came to light when previously hidden data in the document sent by GBC in October 2018 to David Hodge, then Surrey county council leader, proved it was actually written by Savills, the property agents for Wisley Property Investments Ltd, registered in the Cayman Islands with unnamed investors.

Tracey Coleman head of planning at GBC, David Hodge former leader of SCC, Paul Spooner leader of GBC and Matt Furniss deputy leader of GBC.

The company wants to build 2,000 homes at the former Wisley airfield, a green belt development that could make them tens of millions.

Cllr Hodge’s letter in support of GBC’s Wisley garden village proposal

The letter, via GBC planning department, run by Ms Coleman, was sent by Matt Furniss, GBC deputy leader and a Cabinet member at Surrey County Council. Mr Hodge added a sentence to it, signed it and returned it to Paul Spooner, the GBC leader.

Questions posed to WPIL and reply statement from Mike Murray, spokesperson for WPIL which, in the final sentence, admits that Savills wrote the letter sent by Cllr Hodge.

Now WIPL admits the letter was written by Savills and given to planners at GBC “for reference only”.

The council used the Hodge SCC letter to help make a bid for government funds to support a garden village scheme for the proposed development (see SCC letter above). But the council acts as arbiters of planning proposals, and acceptance of undisclosed help from the developer’s agents conflicts with their planning authority role.

Whether GBC asked for such a letter is not yet known, although the question, among others, has already been asked of Mr Spooner and Mr Furniss. No response to the questions has been received.

Campaigners opposing the scheme were shocked by the letter last year, because SCC had until then stayed largely detached from GBC planning decisions. Then Dr Mary-Claire Travers, chair of Ockham parish council, challenged the Hodge letter as “ill-informed”.

In February 2019, county council deputy leader Colin Kemp wrote saying the council had not intended to express support for any planning application but did support Guildford council’s application for funding.

“The letter was requested by GBC purely to support their bid to the department for extra funding to process the application for the Wisley development to become a garden village. While the letter is expressed in strong terms it, therefore, should not be read as support for the planning application.

“Clearly it is not for the county council to strongly support planning applications and you may take this letter as confirmation this was not the intent (see letter above).”

Dr Travers said there could be little doubt that anyone reading the original letter “would have regarded it as unequivocal support for the garden village bid”.

When The Dragon learnt of the FoI report, we asked Cllr Kemp if he or new SCC leader Tim Oliver knew the provenance of the letter. His answer was curt and uninformative (see reply right, with a list of repeated Dragon questions).

Yesterday Dr Travers said: “It seems clear that both Guildford Borough Council and Surrey County Council have permitted Savills to dictate the somewhat doubtful arguments supporting a Garden Village at Wisley – presumably on behalf of Wisley Property Investments Ltd.”

“Can there be any clearer evidence that property developers are setting the agenda and leading the drive for house-building in the green belt in Guildford, with full approval from a compliant local council?”

Tony Edwards, Wisley Action Group spokesman

Tony Edwards, an Ockham resident and member of the Wisley Action Group, said: “The investors claim that their agent Savills merely provided ‘an example text’ for ‘reference only’.  Curious, then, that it referred specifically to ‘seven benefits to the local’ area resulting from their client’s proposals at Wisley, albeit making unfounded claims such as declaring that the initiative was ‘locally led’.

“And we had previously been assured that this copy-cat letter, sent by the former SCC leader to the GBC leader, was the result of ‘a lot of thought’. Now it’s now clear that the ‘thought’ was dictated by Savills and accepted wholesale by both councils.”

Colin Cross

Colin Cross (Ind, Lovelace), whose ward includes Wisley, said: “GBC should never work this closely with a developer or allow any developer to draft important documents that request grants and beneficial treatment, ie the support by a major local authority to effectively help obtain GBC and/or WPIL financial and other advantages.

“Many questions arise from these revelations and the link between this episode and the earlier query on the authorship of the GBC bid for the Wisley garden village tender.  We were told the bid was primarily the work of GBC planning department but there is strong evidence that, again, it was largely the work of one of WPIL’s consultant companies, not GBC.

“The question is what is the relationship between GBC and WPIL and what is GBC’s reasoning in developing it?  Who is making these decisions and why?

“The situation calls for a radical review with perhaps one of GBC’s ‘Independent Persons’ being appointed to investigate.”

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