Letter: Well Done to My Fellow Councillors for Rejecting the Urnfield Sports Ground Proposal

Published on: 5 Dec, 2021
Updated on: 5 Dec, 2021

From: John Redpath

R4GV borough councillor for Holy Trinity

In response to: comment from Christine Wilson on Urnfield Sports Ground Application Rejected Against Planning Officers’ Advice

If Guildford did not already have three underused floodlit hockey pitches then an appeal might have some ground. If developing this AONB site would mean more school places available in Guildford an appeal might have some ground. If County School actually played hockey as a sport an appeal might have more ground. If the Spectrum didn’t have an underused running track an appeal might have some ground. Need I go on?

To summarise there is no need for this development only a want. All schools should help protect the environment we are lucky to have in Guildford rather than greedily want to develop it for their own prestige and their prospectus?

Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB) should be protected and well done to all those GBC councillors who helped to do so last Wednesday.

Responses to Letter: Well Done to My Fellow Councillors for Rejecting the Urnfield Sports Ground Proposal

Adam Aaronson Reply

December 5, 2021 at 10:23 pm

In future, it would be good for Guildford and might help planning all over the country, if all planning applications were subjected in the first instance to Cllr Redpath’s need/want test.
David Roberts Reply

December 6, 2021 at 5:49 pm

So-called “school leaders” need taking down a peg or two. Their job is teaching but they increasingly seem to see themselves as property entrepreneurs, promoting grandiose projects and expecting parents and planners to fall into line.

In the case of the Howard of Effingham, this involves the ultimate pact with the devil: selling the entire school site to property developers as an easy way to fund expansion. The Raleigh in Horsley has contemplated the same trick. Always, as in the Urnfield case, the losers are the wider community and the local environment.

Parents should remember that their children will have left school long before any of these projects is complete, and resist eroding their natural birth-right. Better real estate is not better education; if there is no public or charitable money for improvements, schools should just make do.