I cannot agree with the comment made by Cllr Illman (Conservative) at the council meeting, that, “The Local Plan is not keeping people up at night and on the scale of things, it’s probably not overly important to their lives”.

When people say they are not political or have no interest in politics it seldom means that they don’t care about the impact of policies that affect them, they may, however, have little interest in the process.

To say that a Plan that will have a permanent effect on Guildford, lacks importance and “is not keeping people up at night”, fails to recognise the depth of feeling people have for their town and villages and the real fears they have over the detrimental impact that aspects of this plan will most certainly have. People have sold up and left Guildford because of this Plan.

Selling your home, taking your children out of school and leaving your friends of umpteen years and the community in which you have a sense of belonging, does result in sleepless nights. Battling with GBC to get answers to very simple questions like, what will the impact be on our roads of the planned growth in Surrey and what exactly will the ‘mitigation’ projects look like, really matters to communities.

People who are concerned about losing their property via compulsory purchase or who see their peaceful, more rural, way of life, urbanised and changed beyond all recognition are probably having a few sleepless nights. People have concerns about getting a place for their children in schools, about the ever-increasing wait to see a doctor about flooding in the winter, and so on. The Local Plan, directly and indirectly, concerns almost every aspect of everyday living, as growth (particularly if it exceeds capacity) impacts services, safety, and wellbeing.

The catch 22 of the debate appeared to be that the Conservatives wish to have the Plan approved ahead of the election (the underlying and unsaid point here being that it would then be secure should they lose their majority), claiming their motives are not political, yet, at the same time, they accuse R4GV (Residents for Guildford and Villages) who proposed the motion for deferment, of doing so for political reasons! Is it still April 1st?

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