Letter: There Is One Person Who Objects to Weyside Urban Village – Me!

Published on: 31 Oct, 2019
Updated on: 31 Oct, 2019

From Jim Allen

In response to: Housing Minister Pledges to Investigate Delayed Guildford Housing Development Scheme

Anne Milton said in Parliament no one objects to SARP, sorry I mean “Weyside Urban Village”. Actually there is one person, me, since 2005 (though no one seems to be listening, as usual).

I have consistently objected for practical and technical reasons.

The site is currently the main sewage treatment plant for Guildford Town and surrounds. Currently permission has been granted for some 1,000 new homes in excess of capacity. The Burpham pipe was undersize in 1980 and has never been upgraded. Similarly, I suspect other local pipes are undersized.

The treatment plant is on a sensible site, purposely picked in the 1880s, when there were 20 square miles of open land to choose from. The intended move will require the majority of sewer pipes to be re-directed, one way or another, through four metres of refuse.

Thames Water PLC have said they have no finance allocated until at least 2025 and are relying on us the residents to finance this non-commercially viable project, which has been poorly thought out from the very start. The cost of removing the contamination (including the resident rats) will exceed the value of the homes being built. The very reason this project is 10-15 years behind schedule and there is still no declared entrance to this “urban village”.

The approach to the project reminds me of the politician who said “We want to send a man to Mars,” and the engineer’s response: “Do you want him back?”

Responses to Letter: There Is One Person Who Objects to Weyside Urban Village – Me!

Peter Fitzpatrick Reply

November 2, 2019 at 10:16 am

GBC held a “consultation meeting” about plans to evict allotmenteers. They told us we were moving to a green belt area which needed the home secretary’s approval for change of use.

All of the questions about traffic management, access, ‘the Aggie’ (the Stoke and District Horticulture Society’s clubhouse) the fact that allotments were on land which historically was green belt already, including a bequested area, didn’t get answered. It was as if they needed to tell us before Ann Milton’s speech.

They did tell us planning hadn’t been granted and the sewage treatment plant was in the planning stage of moving.

It was all rushed in my view not thought through at all.