Quack, quack, quack

Like little ducks lined up all in a row, Guildford Borough Councillors voted for their own motion that rejected the “Excess Housing” e-petition debated in the council chamber in front of the full council last Tuesday 8 July 2014.  No Councillor voted against and only five abstentions. Not that you would expect anything else.  The scene had already been set on 19 June when the same Councillors voted to accept the final draft Local Plan as presented, without change to the excessive annual house building target of 652 per year over its 15 year lifetime, and so moved it into the second round of consultation.

The e-petition requested “We, the undersigned, petition Guildford Borough Council to reject their current aggressive pro-development pro-building strategy. The current strategy would mean building more housing than we need (and also more commercial buildings than we need) because of an incorrect perception that economic growth can only come from building. This strategy is unsustainable and must be rejected.”

Painting and decorating in the borough

It’s been a while since we did a major painting and decorating job on the house, in fact it was just before our son was born, so approaching a decade.  We wanted to have a fresh start for our new family member.  To keep things neutral, even-handed, we chose Old English White for the walls and generic eggshell white for the woodwork. With colours like that and a young son careering round the place as he grows up, scuffing the paintwork, things have become a little jaded recently and maybe could do with some attention, even though budgets are tighter than they used to be.  When I was younger than my son is now, back in the 1950’s, my dad used to talk about how few wall colours were available before WW2 if you didn’t want to spend lots of money on covering over the cracks with wallpaper.  Funny how things like this set your mind running.

Housing Numbers

Very thorough analysis that gives insight into why there is a myriad of different potential targets. Although originally posted in October 2013 and therefore reflective of the 2009 SHMA that was available to the 2013 Guildford draft Local Plan, it raises serious questions that the new SHMA (December 2013) has failed to address.

It’s all about money

Guildford Borough Council [GBC] and Enterprise M3 Local Enterprise Partnership [LEP] have a strongly intertwined relationship, with a former leader of Guildford Borough Council and a leading figure from University of Surrey sitting on it’s board.  The council and the LEP have together created a shared Strategic Economic Plan [SEP] that is seeking funding from the EU (initially £38.54 million) and UK government sources (£70.00 million from the Local Growth Fund for housing alone) and further funding steams such as the New Homes Bonus (GBC received £1.5 million New Homes Bonus 2012/2013) plus others from the Homes & Communities Agency ).  The funding streams are contingent on a growth strategy, stimulating employment and thereby driving local housing demand and potentially stimulating new house building.

New SHMA no better than wetting a finger and sticking it in the air

So much for “objectivity”.

The more I sat there and listened to the director of the GL Hearn planning consultancy trying to explain the numbers, the more I realised what a cosy little world exists between these highly rewarded professionals and the local planning authority [LPA] apparatchiks.  He claimed he had already appeared at, at least, four PINS public enquiries into submitted Local Plans in the last few months, so knew exactly what he was talking about.  However, when challenged on simple facts of the SHMA Guidance issued in 2007 concerning the types of stakeholders with which he was required to engage to inform his company’s consideration of the “objectively assessed” number of houses, he singularly failed.

What is a SHMA?

If you type “what is a SHMA?” into popular Internet search engines, among other things a list of hundreds of local authority web pages will be presented to you, all describing the role that a Strategic Housing Market Assessment study [SHMA] is playing in helping them determine the number of houses they will need to plan to build over the forthcoming years of their local plan, how they have gone about it and what it means for their community.

Everything reaches a crescendo

There was the usual last minute blizzard of residents exchanging emails, reminding each other to send letters, submit comments on the Local Plan Consultation and get to Guildford station in time for 1.30pm for the “March to Millmead”.

Join the Friday “March on Millmead”

An increasing level of anger and frustration among residents in threatened Green Belt villages around Guildford Borough at this initial stage of the Local Plan consultation process is to culminate in a march to the council offices at Millmead.  Check out the Guildford Dragon story on-line.

Normandy hits local headlines

The pros and cons of the impact of proposals for eight potential development areas in Flexford and Normandy for over 700 new houses, and a hint of a whole lot more, featured on the front page of the Ash & Farnham News & Mail today.