Letter: The No 1 Onslow Street Application Raises Several Issues

Published on: 17 Apr, 2023
Updated on: 17 Apr, 2023

No 1 Onslow Street permission granted for three extra floors. Image Google Maps

From Alistair Smith

In response to: Building Height Goes Up While Lib Dems Keep Their Heads Down

The Guildford Society was the sole objector to the No1 Onslow Street Scheme. The Society have also objected to 23/W/00016 referred to by David Smith – it was posted in Documents 20-3-2023.

The No1 Onslow Street application raises a number of issues:

a) This application doesn’t appear to have been, at a minimum, discussed with councilors.

b) It is also a surprise that planning officers didn’t refer the application, which they can easily do, to the Planning Committee as it was obvious that North Street, on an adjacent site, with similar scale and height was subject to public concern.

c) No 1 Onslow Street was determined at almost the same time as the North Street determination. The Planning Committee had no knowledge of the status of the No 1 Onslow Street Application.

I understand that applications are determined on a site-by-site basis, but the officers’ report on North Street didn’t even mention potential overshadowing from an increase in No 1 Onslow Street height or issues related to two adjacent sites, let alone the bus station, potentially conducting substantial building at the same time.

d) This application also highlights the failure of GBC to use the recently agreed DMP to put in place height and density policies to fill in the most obvious gaps in the Local Plan 2019. Many pressed the council to use the DMP to provide the framework of policies that the town desperately requires.

e) It is amazing that some joined-up thinking across sites was not exercised as both North Street and No 1 Onslow Street fundamentally impact the area at the junction of Woodbridge Road and Onslow Street.

Responses to Letter: The No 1 Onslow Street Application Raises Several Issues

John Ferns Reply

April 18, 2023 at 10:38 am

Further evidence that the three ward councillors, Hunt, Goodwin, and Taylor, were, at best ‘asleep at the wheel’.

All the emerging evidence reinforces the view that the Lib Dems panicked at the initial Horsley intervention on North Street, (pre-planning committee) and like jackals, jumped onto the bandwagon of public hysteria engendered by his video, in the hope that they might leave their political rivals, whom they feared, to face all the embarrassment.

Ultimately, Cllr Tom Hunt bears the greater culpability, as his Executive role includes oversight of the planning department. Either that department failed to follow procedure, or if it did follow it, the three ward councillors were content to leave the 1 Onslow decision in the hands of the planners. Either, the Lib Dems are all to blame.

Their party appears to be all at sea with their policies… (do/did they have any?); and their public relations are in tatters, having been abandoned to the dubious diarchy of Robin Horsley, and the didacticism of the feckless George Potter.

And the band plays on as their party leader and Leader of the council, Julia McShane, remains helplessly silent in the wings.

And this is the party that aspires to lead GBC. You could not make it all up.