Letter: Plastering the Countryside With Dormitory Ghettos Is Not Progress

Published on: 14 May, 2017
Updated on: 14 May, 2017

David Roberts

In response to: a comment from Cllr Colin Cross on the article Councils ‘Ignoring’ Powers to Limit Green Belt Development

Guildford Borough Council’s 2014 “Greenbelt and Countryside Study” was a update of an earlier, 2011 one supervised by Cllr Jenny Wicks, then lead councillor for planning. Lady Wicks has a high reputation as a local councillor but has never explained why, in 2011, she allowed the startling new proposal to “inset” (i.e. expel) two-thirds of Guildford’s villages from the green belt.

This gave her notorious successor, Monika Juneja, the opening she needed to promote excessive green belt development in the Local Plan, and Cllr Spooner a lazy excuse for continuing to do so.

The public was never consulted on the flawed 2011 or 2014 studies, on the dishonest grounds that they were part of an “objective evidence-base” rather than decided policy. But by a series of steps (the 2013 “Issues and Options” paper and two iterations of the draft Local Plan) the idea has become set in stone that Guildford must sacrifice green fields to progress. Plastering the countryside with dormitory ghettos of executive homes, however, is not progress.

Responses to Letter: Plastering the Countryside With Dormitory Ghettos Is Not Progress

Andrew Procter Reply

May 14, 2017 at 4:14 pm

There is no realistic demand limit to placing executive boxes on the green belt in Surrey which is a very poorly thought out approach to addressing the so called “housing crisis” (beloved terminology of the national house builders) which in basic economic terms is really a crisis of “house pricing and distribution”.

Guildford Borough Council should not be plastering the green belt with executive boxes they should instead be increasing substantially the density of development on central brownfield sites in Guildford. This is in line with current Government policy. Moreover these sites should be used to facilitate Mrs May’s latest “new idea” of providing really affordable homes to rent.

A little late in the day for successive governments who have managed to rid this country of two million essential social houses between 1980 and 2017 through the Right to Buy scheme. The average salary in the South East is £30,000 per annum which provides the potential to borrow £100,000, not enough to afford one of the new executive boxes in the green belt priced at £600,000!
Jim Allen Reply

May 14, 2017 at 5:29 pm

Nothing like knowing the history of a subject to put forward a ration explanation of what has gone on before, why reality has been inverted and the future sent on a path no one actually wants, needs or can justify.