Letter: R4GV Risks Being Trumped in Next Year’s Election

Published on: 9 Jul, 2022
Updated on: 9 Jul, 2022

From: David Roberts

Cllr Colin Cross’s timid counsel of despair ignores an obvious third option: the council could decide what outcome it wants to produce and then move heaven and earth to achieve it. In the real world, this is known as “politics”.

Without a clear objective (eg to reduce the Local Plan housing target by 5,000 homes) how can anyone hold the council to account?

How can success or failure even be measured?

How can our elected councillors stop being led by the nose by the “blob” of council officers, housebuilders, consultants and lawyers with a vested interest in over-development?

And how can Residents for Guildford and Villages (R4GV), especially, avoid being trumped in next May’s local elections by a cynical Tory promise to revise the Local Plan in the light of “unexpected” factors, such as the ONS’s defective population projections, which everyone has known about for years?

I can already see the Conservative leadership at GBC cooking this up with local MPs and the next Secretary of State.