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.

I did say that I would return to the subject of the Carthouse Lane Allotments, although the target date for this application is not until the middle of February. It won’t be heard at the planning meeting on Tuesday – the agenda for that is now published.

Horsell Residents Association met on Wednesday evening and briefly discussed the application. There were concerns about how allotments and warehouses could be built in close proximity to the Special Protection Area when homes themselves were restricted. This all stems to a useless EU directive that is designed to protect nightjars and Dartford Warblers in southern Spain but has wrecked the housing plans of local authorities throughout the Thames Valley.

Put simply, people keep pets and walk them near where they live. It is those dogs and cats that cause a potential hazard to the habitat of ground-nesting birds and the birds themselves. By comparison, a warehouse or industrial unit creates no similar threat. It’s a completely ridiculous directive but there we go.

The general consensus at HRA was that the application itself is no bad thing, even if it did highlight the silliness of the EU law.

Sorry for not blogging more, I’ve come down with a heavy cold over the last couple of days and haven’t felt like doing much.

I will blog on it more at a later point but a planning application for light industrial units and warehouses on the Carthouse Lane site, as well as 80 new allotments, has been put in by Rutland Homes. We are assured that these will be in addition to and not instead of the current Horsell Allotments.

I need to declare a personal interest here – as someone on the waiting list for Horsell Allotments, I stand to gain getting an allotment several years earlier than expected if the application is granted and the scheme goes ahead. But setting that aside, I don’t have a problem with the warehouses given what’s already there – and think it would be difficult to stop them through the planning system anyway.

However, I’d be interested to hear from anyone living in the lane if they have any objections. The application can be viewed on the Woking Borough Council website at the Public Access for Planning application. Under application search, enter PLAN/2009/1091. Objections need to be in by January 21 – Horsell Residents Association is aware.

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.