Welcome to my blog. I am a former local journalist who now works in PR and a Conservative and community activist in Woking and Horsell. This blog will keep updated on local issues as well as my interests and quirky news stories.
Horsell Common with Heather Farm on far left and Common Close visible
I’ve never quite understood why a possible site for one of Surrey’s two required energy-from-waste plants was smack bang in the middle of a Site of Special Scientific Interest.
Horsell Common is a precious resource – a haven for wildlife and rare plants, a respite from the bustling town life all around, a place for walking dogs and riding horses and somewhere of cultural importance to Woking being identified so clearly in HG Wells’s War of The Worlds. It stretches much farther than the width of Shores Road and cuts across the majority of the west and east Horsell areas. It is generally undervalued within Woking but has a number of staunch supporters who are dedicated to protecting it and its natural beauty and preserving it for others to enjoy.
What it is not is the correct place to site a large industrial building for generating power. It is not a place where large vehicles can enter and exit easily and it should be protected from the noise, odours and detritus of medium-scale industrial activity. To me, this is plainly obvious; but two sets of local authority officers have worked in such a way as to make exactly such an industrial eyesore a realistic possibility. Thankfully, it now looks unlikely.
Horsell Common Preservation Society has successfully argued to overturn a Woking Borough Council planning decision against a change of use for the site to include small-scale industrial and storage buildings. The borough council refused the application on the basis that the Surrey Waste Plan had set aside the site as a possible location for one of its two energy-from-waste plants. But the inspector decided there were compelling reasons – not least of them concerning HCPS’s control over access to the site – that meant Heather Farm was unlikely to be viable prospect as a EFW location and he granted the original application.
His report is pretty clear and it won’t make for comforting reading at county hall. But it should do in Horsell; if a buyer can be found to take on the operation of the site, we should have seen off the bizarre prospect of a waste plant on the doorstep of one of the county’s most environmentally sensitive areas.
