Update 3rd October

After a couple of weeks in which there really didn't seem to be anything to say, a few things are happening at the moment.

Is Waverley’s planning policy toast?

The front page of this week’s Herald reports on rumours that Waverley Borough Council plans to withdraw its “Core Strategy” document outlining is planning policy for the next decade.  Well, for once (just once?) I am ahead of the Herald – the ruling Conservative group has issued a press release confirming that the full council meeting on October 15^th will take the decision whether or not to withdraw the document.

The issue is that “the provisional Strategic Housing Market Assessment (SHMA) for Waverley has indicated that over 8000 homes will be needed in the borough over the next 20 years. The findings mean that it is likely that Waverley's Core Strategy will need to be resubmitted in order to consider accommodating this number of homes, which will necessitate the re-designation of the Green Belt and Areas of Great Landscape Value (AGLV). “

WBC has until now planned for 230 new homes per year over the next 20 years, believing that this is the limit which its residents and electors will tolerate.  The SHMA, a target imposed on WBC by the government regardless of their wishes, calls for 400 a year.  WBC in effect finds itself between a rock and a hard place – to build the numbers of homes demanded will, they believe, cause a backlash from voters as greenbelt, areas of outstanding natural beauty etc, will no doubt be eyed up by developers banking on the SHMA forcing such proposals to be approved. The Conservative press release is not particularly complimentary about their colleagues in national government who are imposing this upon them.

On the other hand, if insufficient new homes are built in our area, the supply/demand equation will inevitably mean prices inflate and first time buyers will be priced out of the market.  Our own children will not be able to live nearby, and our firemen and teachers will have to continue commuting in from Littlehampton or Portsmouth and all the other far-flung places where they can actually afford to live.

In a Pickle about parking

Of course, local authorities, including and indeed perhaps especially Tory authorities, are used to defying the wishes of their counterparts in Westminster, who have a tendency not to practice what they preach about devolved government and local decision-making.  Fresh from his posturings about forcing councils to resume weekly refuse collections, which almost all councils have now abandoned in favour of alternating fortnightly refuse and recycling collections, in the interests of cost saving and encouraging more recycling – and remember that they have also got plenty of stick about daring to increase council tax precepts by the 1.99% which is permitted without a local referendum – Eric Pickles has been mouthing off about parking.

First it was to say that he thought that anyone should be able to park on double yellow lines for up to 20 minutes to “pop in” to a shop to collect a newspaper.  I’m afraid even my diseased imagination can’t picture Pickles “popping in” anywhere, although I can certainly imagine how he might not be able to haul his carcase further than kerb to shop door and so need freedom to park anywhere.  He seems to imagine that councils paint double yellow lines just for fun, or as a means to trap honest, god fearing, “hard-working” residents into paying more “tax”.

Now, he announces plans to prohibit councils from using CCTV to enforce parking restrictions and issue fines, which of course they do purely as a revenue raising measure.  Or at least about a third of councils do (use CCTV, that is) – Surrey and Waverley are not among them so his proposal does not affect us.

So imagine, his own local authorities of Basildon and Southend-on-Sea, covering his parliamentary constituency, have defied him.  They say that they need the cameras to enforce compliance and prevent obstruction of the highway.

 

We could do with CCTV enforcement in Haslemere.  Last Sunday I observed that the whole of West Street, end to end, was parked up, entirely regardless of the double yellow lines (which mean no parking at any time) outside what is now Roxtons and opposite Waitrose.  This is despite the fact that on Sunday, parking in the borough car parks is free, and at that time there was plenty of spare capacity in both the High Street and Chestnut Avenue car parks.

The situation is getting out of control.  The reduction of the entire length of West Street to a single lane means that traffic backs up on the High Street as it waits behind a car attempting to turn into West St but failing, because of a continuous stream of oncoming vehicles on the “wrong” side of the road which have nowhere else to go to permit traffic to pass.  Worse, it presents a very real obstacle to fire appliances leaving the fire station on a "shout", where minutes may mean lives

 

Double Vision

I have attended two meetings of the Haslemere Vision project recently, a “visioning” workshop on Saturday, and a meeting of the Transport group this week.

I confess I was sceptical about what HV might be able to achieve, but what I find is much more encouraging. Certainly some of the “imagineering” gets a bit carried away, but to some extent that is deliberate – you have to dream something up before you can knock it down, if you don’t, you’ll never know whether it might have flown.

At the visioning workshop, to talk about what we thought residents might want the town to be like in 20 years’ time, I was struck by, in fact surprised by, the discovery that one of the key concerns residents have is the need for more affordable housing – not specifically cheaper housing (although that is a factor, that my interest in a high value for my house works against my children, who won’t be able to afford to live near me, even in the unlikely event that they wanted to when they grow up) but homes managed by housing associations, or sold in “shared ownership” ie the occupant buys, and can sell, say a half-interest only in the property so that a housing trust can ensure that the property remains in the hands of “key workers”.  Everyone is apparently concerned that some of our firemen commute up from Littlehampton, and our school teachers travel up from Portsmouth on a daily basis because housing in this area is unaffordable.  And another area of concern was ageing population, so you can add nurses and care workers to that mix.

What consequences that might have for development in the town, the NIMBY problem, wasn’t really tackled, but I did detect not an enormous amount of sympathy over the proposed development at Sturt Farm, where it is promised that 40% of the 130 or so homes would be Affordable Homes.  Of course there are concerns over the capacity of utilities (the electricity supply, drainage etc)  to cope with the increased demand, but we agreed that these are now in the hands of private companies, who can invest in infrastructure in the knowledge that they will collect revenues for the services they provide.  

One participant commented that much of the opposition to Sturt Farm comes from Sun Brow which, ironically, was originally social housing (council housing) sold off under the Thatcher right-to-buy but now in many cases in the hands of subsequent owners, at least one of whom has written in the past to the Herald to bemoan the fact that the open country view she purchased may soon be blocked and, in a further irony, was constructed on land which previously belonged to – Sturt farm!

There is a brief letter in this week’s Herald, perhaps from the same correspondent, whose apparent concern over wider environmental issues with the site is not entirely disinterested:

 

I have no view on this or on the issues raised about the land being in an area of landscape value – what land around here isn’t – or the potential for traffic issues in Sturt Road which is becoming increasingly congested. I can however see an advantage in keeping new settlement within walking distance of the town centre and railway station, with the nearby footpath into Longdene Rd being upgraded and made available to cyclists, instead of creating a car-dependent community in the middle of nowhere half way to Midhurst and adding further to our commuter parking problems.  Also, God knows we need the affordable housing.

The second meeting, about transport, was rather dominated by parking, as many attendees ruefully predicted that it would be.  We learnt about the financial dynamics inside South West Trains, the Dept for Transport and the Treasury – various acronyms which I no longer recall about revenue statements and funding obligations and franchise renewals etc – which boil down to a multi-storey car park at the station being at the very least a distant prospect, if it ever happens at all.  Not that I am sorry to hear that – I favour the Prince Charles view of such things, as “carbuncles”.  In any case, at present (although Haslemere Vision is not about the present, rather the future two decades from now) the capacity for commuters in the car parks and on-street where unrestricted is not yet fully utilised.  SWT is not much motivated to facilitate more commuters into Haslemere because the trains are close to capacity already – a fact to which I can attest as a daily peak hours commuter:  most trains are not full at Haslemere, but by Guildford and certainly by Woking they are overcrowded, and a train from Portsmouth has to have the capacity to accommodate the numbers of passengers on it by then, not just from Portsmouth.

On a more positive note, there was great enthusiasm for measures to improve the lot of pedestrians and cyclists around the town, to make the two town centres (or possibly one, if we can create a link between them) more attractive and to improve the pedestrian access from High St to Weyhill and from both directions towards the station.