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Letter: Effingham Should Be Congratulated for Their ‘Rural Roar’
Published on: 14 Sep, 2026
Updated on: 14 Sep, 2026
Guildford’s “grey belt” according to AECOM Study.
From David Roberts
In response to: Rural Roar – My Parish Council Is Backing the Campaign and Standing Up for Surrey Villages
All this was avoidable. Nothing forced GBC to pay AECOM, a US-owned lackey of the property industry, to produce a report promoting maximum development, just as nothing forced the previous Tory council to commission one expelling most of Guildford’s villages from the green belt.
It will now take a big campaign to slow down this remorseless attack on nature and the countryside. Effingham should be congratulated. The north-east of the borough, including the Horsleys, Ockham and Send, have been in the vanguard of the resistance to this orgy of speculative over-development for many years.
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Responses to Letter: Effingham Should Be Congratulated for Their ‘Rural Roar’
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George Potter
September 14, 2026 at 1:01 pm
Once again Mr Roberts demonstrates his fundamental, yet aggressive, misunderstanding of the planning system. The Green Belt Assessment is not “promoting maximum development”, it simply analyses what the new national planning rules mean for Guildford’s green belt.
The founders of Rural Roar should be commended for actually engaging with the issue and correctly identifying that the necessary solution requires changes to the NPPF (National Planning Policy Framework), which must be done in Westminster, rather than mindlessly blaming GBC for things entirely outside of its ability to change.
George Potter is a Lib Dem borough councillor
David Roberts
September 14, 2026 at 8:15 pm
Cllr Potter’s well-known habit of insulting residents need not detain us. GBC has blundered by allowing the property industry to cook the evidence, just as the Tory council did with the Local Plan.
We elect councils to set political parameters on development planning and to challenge vested interests on the public’s behalf.
No-one forced GBC to hire AECOM or to support its methodology as objective. Neither the NPPF nor Labour’s vague “grey belt” policy require nearly all of Guildford’s green belt to be scrapped. But that’s the path we are now embarked on.