Great turnout

April 7, 2010 — simonashall

Despite the Question Time fever, the finale of Masterchef and the Man Utd v Bayern Munich game, we ran clean out of chairs at Horsell Village Hall this evening for the Horsell Residents Association AGM. Sometimes these evenings can be a draining experience but never with HRA – Rob Harris keeps a firm hand on the tiller and ensures that all the official business is dealt with in 30 minutes or so before we welcome a guest presentation.

Last year, it was Marilyn Scott of the Lightbox, this year Paul Rimmer and David Robbins of Horsell Common Preservation Society gave the audience a good grounding in the history, management and natural aspects of the common. HCPS is a superb organisation that does a lot of work for our environment in Horsell that one suspects would be a good deal less well done if left to other authorities to achieve. Membership is only £10 and can be attained here.

I addressed the meeting for a couple of minutes on the LDF character studies that I think could be important in helping to preserve some of the more unique areas of the village. Given that the old Urban Areas of Special Residential Character, which gave some form of assurance to those in areas of urban heritage merit, are disappearing, I think it’s vital for us to put our views forward about the areas that we consider important now. If we don’t, it makes it very difficult at a later stage to oppose planning applications in areas on the grounds of urban heritage and preserving the streetscene.

The old UASRC are a good place to start – The Ridgeway, Grange Road, Heath and Castle Roads, but not necessarily exclusive. Waldens Park Road, Kettlewell Hill and Manor Road are also areas with historic properties in them that speak about the village’s history. It would be a shame if we did not act now to give them the best possible chance of being preserved. I’ll be totally honest with you; my experience of the planning system is that it is an inequitable rich man’s game - a system where central government dictates the rules to local residents via their planning authorities to the benefit of big developers. Developers can afford agents, planning experts, legal advisors and to play the appeals process - residents can rarely match this.

But what we must do is make sure that we give ourselves the best possible chance by taking advantage of what democratic elements the system does afford and that is what I would like to see happen.

Finally, if anyone’s not a member of HRA, please consider it - we really would like to be able to do more but need more members and income in order to give residents a better service.

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Assessment of Horsell Village Centre

March 25, 2010 — simonashall

Let's keep the development in the town centre and out of Horsell

I attended a meeting tonight on behalf of Horsell Residents Association at Woking Borough Council about carrying out Character Assessments for the Local Development Framework Core Strategy. What this means is that I will be filling in survey details – quite a few of them, actually – about an area in order to provide the council with information it can use when putting together future planning policy.

The area I have chosen is an important one – Horsell High Street between the village school (where Church Hill ends) to the junction with Bullbeggars. This obviously includes the pubs, the village hall and all the shops and so getting the information right is going to take a little while. Among the questions on the survey are positives and negatives about this area and this doesn’t just include planning and built environment issues. I know that we need better parking arrangements in the village centre both to allow people easier access to our shops and make the pavements and roads in the village safer for other cars and pedestrians.

But if there is any other feedback on the character of this area of Horsell that anyone would like to raise, please let me know either by commenting here or emailing me.

In addition, I think that Horsell could benefit from some more surveys being done by residents in conjunction with Horsell Residents Association, particularly in areas of urban heritage value. The whole process should take around three or four hours in most instances, depending on the size of area. All the areas not completed by HRA or residents will be done by the council – they won’t be done badly, but it would be nice to have some control over the information that goes back to the council in the areas of Horsell that we care about most.

So if anyone else would like to do a survey, please get in touch with HRA or Woking Borough Council’s planning department.

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Lack of activity

March 8, 2010 — admin

I’m really sorry about the lack of activity during the past week or so. I’ve been so busy with wedding preparations, various evening meetings and doing my CIPR diploma that it’s been difficult to find the time in the evening to update. I have a mock Critical Reasoning Test in at the beginning of next week that I’m frantically reading up for at the moment. It’s all interesting stuff about persuasion and the nature of public relations but I’m struggling to fit much else in, especially now the garden is getting going again (our lounge table is covered in seed propagators).

There are a couple of things that are ongoing – notably that I will be involved in a LDF Character Study meeting on March 25 on behalf of Horsell Residents’ Association. Further details will follow.

In addition, on St Patrick’s Day (March 17) I will be splitting my time between the HRA management committee and a Tune In event at HG Wells. My understanding is that’s it’s open to all, so why not come along?

I am trying to keep up with everything on Twitter, which is less time-consuming and can be done throughout the day. Why not follow me if you don’t already?

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Lane excuses

November 25, 2009 — admin

The meeting of the executive on Thursday will consider a report on residential mitigation sites for the Hoe Valley Scheme. This is necessary because the Hoe Valley Scheme projections at the moment show a loss and therefore other sites that the council can develop – or sell for development – need to be considered in order to recoup some of this cost.

Among the sites identified is Blackness Lane, which was subject to a similar situation and council consultation in 2003/4. I understand the objections to building so close to the park but the former greenhouses that were on the site were part of the park’s operation and have never been green open space.

There is the issue of traffic along Blackness Lane but I don’t think the proposals will fashion a great number of new homes. It would be good to see that problem addressed though, particularly because of the risks already taken by those turning right into Claremont Avenue from Guildford Road.

The Blackness Lane site is long overdue being developed. There is currently no best value being gained from the asset. I know that the surrounding area has been developed significantly already – I used to live in Claremont Avenue – but the area on the south side of the town centre has got to bare the burden of the superior transport links it enjoys. There is further development on Constitution Hill and the south entrance into the town that needs to be achieved and I hope that is reflected in the Local Development Framework.

The Blackness Lane site is derelict, overgrown and isolated from the park. No-one wants development in their back yard but if Danesfield can take seven townhouses just down the road from me, so can it. In any case, financial realities leave little room for choice – if holding onto dormant assets was an option, it should be no longer.

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Consultation on the LDF

November 9, 2009 — admin

The consultation questionnaire for the new Core Strategy of Woking Borough Council’s Local Development Framework is now available to be filled in. It’s a fair attempt at a consultation online, although necessarily some of the questions invite certain answers and others have limited options to choose from, which may or may not represent your point of view.

Probably the most contentious point will be the housing allocation options, which give three alternatives. Option A entails a small amount of development in Woking Town Centre but almost a third of new houses being provided from infilling. I don’t think many people in Horsell will welcome this approach as infilling is the quickest and surest way to ruin a streetscene – creating ugly new entrances and packing houses together tightly.

Option C would mean a small urban extension ie Green Belt release to provide new homes. While there is merit in considering this, we simply don’t have to do it – there is plenty of land available in Woking to provide the houses that we need. So having eliminated those two options, the only one left is option B, which concentrates development on the town centre, gives less infill and keeps the Moor Lane and Brookwood Farm developments on the agenda (as do all options). It’s not perfect but I’m sure it will be the preferred route.

There is also a question about protection of areas of character at the expense of other areas. With the LDF comes the abolition of Urban Areas of Special Residential Character, which in Horsell included The Ridgeway, Heath Road, Castle Road and our end of Grange Road. We need to ensure that we still have ways of protecting areas of special character – the old rules used to state that nothing in a UASRC could be built that did not materially improve on what was already there and it was a useful stick to wave at developers.

For the record, now that Danesfield has been developed and so too Robert Beldam’s old house next door to us, I don’t think Grange Road quite cuts it anymore on the “must keep” list. I’d prefer to see Manor Road and Waldens Park Road in Horsell West on the list instead.

I’d encourage anyone with views on the subject to get involved and have your say; these decisions will be affecting people across Woking long after most of us have forgotten about the consultation.

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Planning for Horsell’s future

October 13, 2009 — admin
Development at Danesfield

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.

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