The Horsell's Mouth Politics, pedantry and personal interests

Development at Danesfield

When I was at the News and Mail I was the only reporter in the entire newspaper group that enjoyed planning meetings. Well, enjoyed is not quite the word – I was intrigued at how such a simple thing ie building a house was made so immensely complicated, weighed so heavily in favour of developers and inspired such high passions among protagonists.

There is a whole different blog to be had on the ins and outs of planning law but on Thursday, Woking Borough Council’s executive will make a decision on whether to process to consultation with the current Core Strategy for the Local Development Framework - the document on which all planning decisions in the future will be based.

There was nothing really wrong with the old system – the Borough Plan – but that didn’t keep enough people employed so the government has decided to change the system to make it twice as big and complex. There are a great many issues that come from the draft document, most of them hidden away so that very few people will notice.

To my mind, two in particular are important for Horsell – the loss of the Urban Areas of Special Residential Character (UASRC) and the increase in minimum density.

I have lived in two flats in Woking – one on Claremont Avenue and another on Horsell Rise – that were both the result of the dreaded development. Therefore, I don’t really have as much of an issue with it as some. But I do think we must protect areas of particular interest and quality from development. Such areas might include the Edwardian charm of Walden’s Park Road and Manor Road in the west and the tree-lined maturity of Wheatsheaf Close and Orchard Drive in the east.

Under the old UASRC system, whatever replaced a house had to be of equal or better quality in the minds of officers to be approved. This wasn’t a bar to development but at least it presented a benchmark – no longer.

In addition, the current average population density in Woking is 14.4 people per hectare. Bearing in mind that 60% of the borough is green belt, the new housing density laid down by government is at least 30 dwellings per hectare (but preferably more). If we assume that most people live in the 40% that isn’t green belt and say that around 30-35 people per hectare live in land open for development, that’s pretty much one house for every person. Eh?

It’s only a draft and there is detailed policy still to formulate. But there is a risk that in the rush to meet targets areas in Horsell that previously considered themselves outside the reach of developers could become less so.

My personal view is that dogmatic refusal to countenance development detracts from the real fight to preserve the character of prized areas. But preserve it we certainly must.