Letter: Shaping Guildford’s Future and Meeting the New Housing Uplift

Published on: 11 Jan, 2025
Updated on: 11 Jan, 2025

From Bill Stokoe

Guildford Vision Group

In response to: There Is a Way for the New Housing Target To Be Met

Julian Lyon is right – we must get behind “Shaping Guildford’s Future’ (SGF) and the Flood Alleviation Scheme (FAS) if we are to develop our brownfield sites in a managed, sensitive manner to help meet the housing numbers uplift.

The need to do something now is even more pressing, given the inevitable upheaval and dislocation that will follow on from the decision to move to a unitary authority and the disbandment of Guildford Borough Council.

We musn’t allow the SGF & FAS babies to get thrown out with the reorganisation bathwater. The revised housing targets will remain, whatever the reorganised authorities look like.

As Julian explains, there is sufficient, identified brownfield land to deliver over 300 houses per year for the next 10-15 years – a big potential contribution to the new target. SGF is a plan started by the last administration, using expert consultancies, to professionally regenerate our town centre. It cleverly exploits council-owned brownfield land for sustainable homes, most within easy walking distance of the centre and transport hubs.

SGF is sufficiently advanced that it would slip easily and neatly into the Local Plan update currently underway.

To enable SGF to start immediately to deliver would require the council to do two things right now:

Adopt SGF as a “direction of travel” for planning and development guidance. This would
deter the unattractive aspects of the current ad hoc, opportunistic development already
seen in our town
Ensure the new Flood Alleviation Scheme (FAS), currently under review by the Environment
Agency, protects all the brownfield land that SGF earmarks for homes, especially those very
few sites available for development in the next 5-7 years.

The council owns much of this brownfield land so land assembly delays are reduced, if not eliminated. Many of these sites have sat dormant for decades. Now, when we need them most, they remain unplanned and undeveloped.

GVG has long advocated the regeneration of the town centre – delivering a more accessible riverside, wider pedestrianisation, improved infrastructure and, of course, more homes to support the town’s economy.

The SGF masterplan delivers on all these aspects, at the same time respecting the green belt.

The council should formally adopt “Shaping Guildford’s Future” as soon as possible.