Letter: What Will Be the True Price of This Vanity Project?

Published on: 15 Feb, 2022
Updated on: 16 Feb, 2022

Slyfield Area Regeneration Project (SARP) includes the new Thames Water sewage treatment works.

From: Jim Allen

In response to: Plan for Guildford’s New Sewage Works Goes to County Council for Approval

So in order to build a ghetto with inadequate parking, and one direction transport disintegrated from the rail system, no drinking water and destroying a heritage asset the Wey Navigation by its very presence. Thames water a to build a new sewage treatment works in a new location when the old one should have been refurbished in 2005.

As a result, the Riverside Nature Reserve will be turned into a cycle super highway, along with a “towpath” possibly five metres wide from Stoke to Bowers Lock, 3,500 people adjacent to the only tranquil place for miles – a “Sustainable Alternative Natural Greenspace” on an active flood plain. There have been over 300 trees lost in the past 10 years along the Wey trying to prove the flood plain does not flood.

Some might accuse me of being negative but I am simply being practical!

I see this as an ongoing disaster, a project bereft of any moral sanity for a vain purpose which has little consideration for the people who are meant to be housed there: a numbers housing game where developers keep adding rabbit hutches until the cash matches cost, not real homes for real people.

There has been no proper consideration of the technical obstacles and the loss of the allotments is the biggest tragedy. But this is just another tragedy in the sad story of Guildford planning, organised by the same people who dropped the old footbridge into the Navigation recently at Walnut tree Close.

So yes “the project” moves forward at any cost but what is the moral cost, where is the social benefit, what price the destruction to our heritage?

Responses to Letter: What Will Be the True Price of This Vanity Project?

Jules Cranwell Reply

February 16, 2022 at 6:13 am

Has anybody considered whether anybody would want to live on what might be highly contaminated land?
- John Tester Reply
  
  February 16, 2022 at 11:47 am
  
  People who have no accommodation.
- John Phelps Reply
  
  February 16, 2022 at 1:15 pm
  
  Jules Cranwell doesn’t want houses on former green belt land outside his house. He now doesn’t want them on brownfield sites either. Can I ask, where does he expect the next generation to live?
  
  This Nimbyism from people who already own homes is becoming incredibly boring.
  - Ben Paton Reply
    
    February 17, 2022 at 7:59 am
    
    Repeated ad hominem attacks from people who dont have the wit to come up with reasoned arguments are even more boring.
- Keith Reeves Reply
  
  February 16, 2022 at 10:10 pm
  
  As Jim has admitted recently on this website he does like to stir, so we can never be truly sure of his views. However, the points he’s probably trying to make here are lost in the random stream of consciousness.
- Keith Reeves Reply
  
  February 16, 2022 at 10:14 pm
  
  Have you considered that it’s perfectly possible to remediate contaminated sites? It’s quite a routine activity, even on sites with a far greater degree of contamination than is the case here.
- Martin Elliott Reply
  
  February 17, 2022 at 6:04 pm
  
  Has Mr Cranwell checked the 425+ documents in the Planning File? Site surveys and remediation plans are more than likely in there.
  Of course, it’s easier to ask than check the documentation.
  
  Contaminated site remediation is a mature technology. An example is the Olympic 2012 site. More than 80 per cent was treated and remained on-site.
John Perkins Reply

February 17, 2022 at 9:12 am

What is truly boring is the old, old accusation that anyone with concerns about unconstrained building is a ‘Nimby’.

Can I ask John Phelps how he intends addressing the many inherent problems? Sewage, for example?
David Roberts Reply

February 18, 2022 at 6:23 pm

“Nimby” is always an unacceptable term of abuse, regardless of the user’s intention – like calling someone a “chav” or “snowflake.”

It is not a neutral term but a faux-jocular insult used to belittle the opinions, correct or not, of those who are entitled to hold them. More often than not, these are inoffensive elderly people who just want a quiet life.

“Nimby” is a lazy word that only reduces the force of its user’s argument. It is therefore not just rude but counter-productive.
Caroline Perkins Reply

February 19, 2022 at 8:44 pm

I agree with David Roberts, “Nimby” is really a lazy term to use.

A better term for Jules Cranwell’s ideas on where housing should go would be “NOTE”, ie Note Over There Either. Surely, as a supporter of the Save the Hogs Back campaign he should welcome brownfield development.

The Weyside Urban Village site has been carefully laid out so that industrial buildings will be built on the most polluted parts of the site which is why the GBC depot is being moved elsewhere as part of the project.

As other contributors have said, cleaning up contaminated brownfield sites these days is fairly standard practice. This is something that must be done if we want to protect the green fields and landscape we are lucky to have in this borough.
- Jules Cranwell Reply
  
  February 21, 2022 at 12:57 pm
  
  I do not support any level of inappropriate development in the borough, as the South East is dangerously overpopulated already, and “levelling up” can never be achieved if we continue to allow developers to build where their greed ensures the highest profits. Such overdevelopment only exacerbates north to south migration, rather than stems it.
- F M Robertson (Mrs) Reply
  
  March 10, 2022 at 3:50 pm
  
  This 100-year-old allotment, to be largely sacrificed for this plan, is not a brownfield site. It is a cultivated green field with a few innocuous sheds on it.
  
  Cultivated green fields should be preserved. I am a supporter of the Save the Hog’s Back campaign as a consequence. It is troubling to see that other supporters don’t appreciate that large arable fields are not the only way to cultivate the land.