Letter: Will Councillors, For Once, Do the Right Thing?

Published on: 2 Jun, 2026
Updated on: 2 Jun, 2026

Plans for 65 new homes in Horsley. GBC

From David Roberts

In response to: The Horsleys Are at Breaking Point in Terms of Sustainability

Without a site visit, Planning Committee members are not competent to decide this application. How many of them, for instance, realise that these 65 houses, with their hundred or so cars, can be accessed only by a long, single-track farm drive with no footpath?

How many of the have bothered to study the archive of photographs dating back to 2013 showing flooding across the whole site? (planning officers have done their best to bury this graphic evidence in favour of consultants’ fictional reports commissioned by the developers).

Cllr Young understates the strain on the Horsleys. Over 2,000 houses are also being built in Ockham (misleadingly called Wisley since it’s east of the A3), just two miles away with absolutely no accompanying infrastructure. For water, transport, doctors, schools, shops, recreation and everything else, this greenfield development’s 7,000 new residents will be almost entirely dependent on the Horsleys.

The law says new development must be sustainable, not just survivable. Will councillors for once – just once in living memory – please turn down a large planning application in the Horsleys, which is patently bearing an unfair proportion of local development?

Guildford town would have to build 20,000 new houses, straight away, to match this burden. Other parts of the borough (such as Normandy) are only starting to feel the pressure. Others seem mysteriously to have escaped scot-free from the curse of the Tory Local Plan and the perfect vacuum that is Lib Dem local development policy.