Letter: Poor Ash? Try Overrun Ash

Published on: 19 Sep, 2025
Updated on: 21 Sep, 2025

Ash Manor House

From Sue Wyeth-Price

R4GV councillor for Ash South

In response to: Poor Ash – But What About Ockham?

I wonder if David Roberts is fully aware of the amount of development that has taken place in Ash?

In just a few years Ash and Tongham have absorbed in excess of 1,800 new homes – and face applications for another 53 on Ash Manor’s field, a potential 300 on the Ash-Normandy border and 1,000 less than a mile beyond that.

On top of this GBC are saying that the available space around Ash Green, preventing the coalescence of Ash Green with Ash, should be used for a further 269 houses.

That’s around 3,400 houses—far more than any so-called “strategic site” like Wisley (2,000), Gosden Hill (1,700), Blackwell Farm (1,500) or Slyfield (1,000). (Figures taken from Guildford’s Local Plan.)

Those “strategic” sites at least promise masterplans: new schools, shops, community centres, bus routes, GP services, proper road links.

Ash and Tongham got none of it.

The money collected from developers has gone somewhere but there is no noticeable improvement in local infrastructure. Yes, we have a performing arts block at the oversubscribed secondary school and a bridge which gets graffitied on an almost weekly basis, but nothing else.

We have built a dormitory town with not a single commercial building for jobs, no additional shops, healthcare money spent in Surrey Heath borough, education money committed to Waverley, reduced bus services, no community buildings or services and a 5-year fight to get a single classroom added to a primary school with the second highest number of place refusals in the county.

The promises of a new health centre and allotments have been abandoned by the developers and not followed up by the planning teams. The most recent development has just removed the affordable housing commitment. The council now wants more houses to pay for the new bridge, just as residents predicted years ago.

Regardless of the above, the field where the planned 53 could go is hugely important to local residents. The site is the setting of the moated Ash Manor, a 750-year-old Grade 2* listed building together with two other buildings both Grade 2, the only site of its kind in the county and in the top six per cent of listed building in the country.

Developers have tried four times in a decade to build on this site. Of these, one was refused by the council, one was abandoned by the developer at appeal, the next approved by the council but quashed at a judicial review because, in the judge’s decision “the planning officer’s reports did seriously and materially mislead the Planning Committee”.

This was then refused at the council (by a single vote) but out of time and the other, duplicate application appealed by the developer and refused.

Now the same developer who failed to deliver the promised allotments and healthcare is back yet again.

The site had a veteran oak tree on the centre of this field, the symbol of Ash Green village, the field being the original Ash Green. When this blew down during Storm Eunice the council refused to order its replacement.

Residents have been unsuccessful in requesting that the pond on the site is added to the GBC local list of heritage assets. We discovered only yesterday that the planning officer approved a non-material amendment for the application in the neighbouring field removing the protection for the ancient hedgerow and protected trees around these fields previously negotiated with the residents.

Nonetheless, I still sympathise with Ockham. But if residents there want to avoid becoming another Ash, they must stay vigilant and hold councillors and planning officers to account—every step of the way.

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