Letter: Ash Manor House and the Threat From a Weakened Planning Process

Published on: 5 Oct, 2025
Updated on: 5 Oct, 2025

Ash Manor House

From John Ferns

Few places in Surrey can match the historic and archaeological importance of Ash Manor — a moated Grade II medieval site whose setting and rural character have survived for centuries. Yet despite its recognised national significance, the land surrounding it has been subjected to an extraordinary sequence of speculative proposals in recent years by Bewley Homes: six planning applications, two appeals, one judicial review, and a withdrawn scheme, each seeking to push development ever closer to this irreplaceable heritage asset.

The latest attempt, now before Guildford Borough Council, proposes 53 dwellings beside the Manor – and follows the recent culling of the ancient southern hedgerow by contractors working for a neighbouring developer to make way for a footpath. That hedge was no ordinary boundary: it formed the natural screen separating Ash from Ash Green, a defining feature of the local landscape. Its loss has exposed the Manor in open view, inflicting visible harm even before this latest application is determined.

Meanwhile, the planning process itself has been weakened by the quiet misuse of Non-Material Amendments (NMAs) — minor in name but major in effect. At the May and Juniper site next door, two such NMAs were approved: one (22/N/00117) subtly changed the description to read “up to 100 dwellings, including up to 40 affordable homes,” softening what had been presented as a firm commitment.

Another (22/N/00033) altered a condition to realign a footpath — ostensibly to “lessen the impact on the hedgerow and trees” — yet that very change has ironically, and perhaps fatally, compromised the key element of the green buffer that prevents coalescence between Ash and Ash Green and undermined the Ash Manor setting that needs to be preserved at all costs.

A later Deed of Variation modified the affordable-housing tenure after the developer admitted approaching 29 housing associations without a single offer. This is part of a growing pattern: headline promises of “40 per cent affordable housing” that look persuasive on paper but prove hyped proposals increasingly unlikely to be fulfilled in reality.

It’s happening elsewhere

Nor is this behaviour new. Bewley’s earlier Ash Lodge Drive (481 homes) development was approved more than ten years ago on the strength of pledges to deliver a fully-serviced allotment site and a local health centre — both decisive factors in the planning balance. Neither has materialised. The allotments remain undelivered and although Bewley provided the land for a health centre, the proposal has quietly evaporated from view.

And it is happening elsewhere. At Weyside Urban Village, successive NMAs have been used to alter phasing, drawings, and delivery expectations after approval — further evidence of a system that allows commitments made in public to be quietly diluted behind closed doors.

I urge Guildford’s Planning Committee to bear this record firmly in mind. Councillors should not be swayed by officer warnings about the “risk of appeal.” Inspectors fortunately do take account of these factors, especially where promised benefits prove uncertain or illusory. When the planning balance rests on undeliverable claims, refusal is not a gamble — it is sound and responsible governance.

Ash Manor now stands as a test of whether Guildford will protect what truly matters — or continue to trust promises that are unlikely to be kept.