CPRE-Surrey-Voice-Spring-2015-web

SURREY
VOICE
The newsletter of the Surrey branch of
the Campaign to Protect Rural England
Spring 2015
OUR MANIFESTO FOR SURREY
In February the Surrey Branch of the Campaign
to Protect Rural England published a “Manifesto
for Surrey” highlighting 10 key policies for our
county. The emphasis of the Manifesto is on
protecting vulnerable countryside and green
spaces as well as promoting local democracy.
We have written to all the political parties contesting
the General Election and local council elections here
in Surrey in May 2015 asking them to urge their
candidates to endorse our Manifesto and join us in
pledging to defend Surrey’s countryside. Within weeks
of its publication, many candidates from across the
political spectrum had contacted CPRE’s Surrey
branch office in Leatherhead to express their support
for the principles and policies set out in the “Manifesto
for Surrey”. Extensive publicity was achieved in local
newspapers across the county, including the Surrey
Advertiser, and our Branch Director, Andy Smith, was
interviewed about the Manifesto on BBC Radio Surrey.
The 10 policies in our “Manifesto for Surrey” are:
● Protect the Green Belt and other countryside and
green spaces in Surrey from inappropriate
development.
● Oppose excessive and unsustainable housebuilding
figures – especially where demand arises from
outside the county.
● Re-balance the national economy to focus
economic growth and development away from the
overcrowded South East.
● Strengthen our local democracy and decisionmaking
so that new development meets genuine
local needs rather than economic growth targets.
● Prioritise and incentivise the regeneration of urban
brownfield sites, and promote higher density,
well-designed, energy-efficient developments – with
a particular focus on affordable housing.
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Protect our countryside for future generations to enjoy
Ensure that new housing is only permitted if
environmentally acceptable and where adequate
infrastructure and public services are provided.
Preserve neighbourhood character and setting by
retaining open spaces and through the use of local
materials and building styles.
Re-draw the boundaries of the Surrey Hills Area of
Outstanding Natural Beauty to bring existing Areas
of Great Landscape Value within the AONB.
Promote greater public awareness of Surrey’s
biodiversity and wildlife habitats, including our
ancient woodlands, chalk grassland, heathland and
meadows.
Achieve measurable improvements in Surrey’s air
and water quality, and reductions in all forms of
environmental degradation, light pollution and
noise disturbance.
... continued on Page 2
Date for your Diary >
Friday 3rd July 2015 at 7.30pm – Annual Meeting of CPRE Surrey
“Protecting your local countryside” – Abraham Dixon Hall,
The Institute, 67 High Street, Leatherhead, Surrey KT22 8AH.
Follow us on Twitter @CPRESurrey
Visit our website www.cpresurrey.org.uk
Email: cpre.surrey@btconnect.com

Page 2 Surrey Voice – Spring 2015
Continued from Page 1 ...
We are urging all CPRE members and supporters to
draw the attention of political candidates to our
Manifesto and to use it as the basis for discussion
with these candidates on the main issues facing
Surrey. Any election candidates reading this article
who have not yet “signed up” and who wish to express
DRILLING IN THE SURREY HILLS
LHAG – The story so far
The Leith Hill Action Group was established in
2009 to fight a planning application by Europa
Oil & Gas for an exploratory drill site involving
a 35-metre high drilling rig at Bury Hill Wood,
Coldharbour Lane, in the heart of the nationally
protected Surrey Hills Area of Outstanding
Natural Beauty. LHAG, backed by CPRE Surrey,
has campaigned vigorously to raise awareness
of this highly contentious planning application
and to demonstrate the significant flaws and
misleading statements within Europa’s
application. LHAG has around 1,500 supporters
signed up to receive its newsletters and to date has
raised over £100,000 in fighting this application.
Surrey County Council refused planning permission
back in May 2011 on grounds including:
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Bury Hill Wood and the access road, Coldharbour
Lane, are within a nationally protected
designated AONB.
Insufficient research has been undertaken to
identify alternative sites outside the AONB.
The committee of the Leith Hill Action Group
their support for our policies should email
cpre.surrey@btconnect.com or telephone the
CPRE branch office in Leatherhead on 01372 362720.
For further information on CPRE’s policies, please
write to: Andy Smith, Director, CPRE Surrey,
The Institute, 67 High Street, Leatherhead KT22 8AH.
Andy Smith
Europa subsequently appealed and a public inquiry
was held in 2012, with the planning inspector
upholding SCC’s decision. However, Europa then
appealed the planning inspector’s decision at the
High Court and won; the planning inspector’s
decision was overturned.
A second public inquiry is now set to take place,
starting on 22 April 2015 and scheduled to run for 7
days. A new planning inspector has been appointed
to decide whether or not to uphold SCC’s original
decision to refuse Europa planning permission. Once
again LHAG will play a full role in this inquiry as a
rule 6 party. A major fundraising drive is therefore
once again underway to raise the necessary £30,000
for LHAG to pay its appointed professionals’ fees.
CPRE Surrey is supporting this appeal.
LHAG Chairman Patrick Nolan explains: “CPRE, the
National Trust, Surrey Hills AONB Board and Mole
Valley District Council all object to this application,
and SCC have received in excess of 2,000 letters and
emails of objection. We understand the need for the
UK to secure its own energy supplies but wherever
oil is explored or
produced, it has to be
done responsibly
without causing
irreparable damage to a
nationally protected
area. There are other
sites outside the AONB
from where Europa can
explore the same
potential reserves.”
See www.LHAG.org.uk
for further information,
including details of how
to sign up to receive
LHAG’s newsletters and
how to make a donation.
Charlotte Nolan
Surrey Voice – Spring 2015 Page 3
GREEN BELT UNDER THREAT
All across Surrey, areas of Green Belt are at
risk, with the potential for more than 15,000
new homes on Green Belt land.
The Local Plan process in several Surrey districts
is “starting from scratch”. After receiving
thousands of objections from residents, and
following statements by Ministers on the
continued importance of the Green Belt, and
stressing that it would be “unlikely” that Green
Belt sites should be released to meet housing
needs, both Mole Valley and Guildford councils
withdrew their draft housing plans, and Mole
Valley scrapped its Green Belt boundary review.
This provides a temporary respite but no more
than that as further plans could come forward
after the May local elections which could bring
even greater threats. In Mole Valley’s case there was
also a concern that the district’s Local Plan was not
compliant with the National Planning Policy
Framework and that the process therefore needed to
be started again in light of the NPPF and new planning
guidance from Government.
Meanwhile, Spelthorne and Elmbridge councils have
confirmed that they are also to review their Local Plan
“core strategies” to make them “NPPF-compliant”.
[This followed Tandridge council’s decision to do so
some months before.] Reviewing these core strategies
will open up the possibility that areas of Green Belt
in these districts could come under renewed threat
as it is likely that Green Belt boundary reviews will
have to be undertaken.
Elmbridge also has an application for a “new village”
in the Green Belt, of up to 1,000 new homes, with
offices and retail facilities. In Tandridge, where
development pressures are growing, work on a new
Local Plan has produced evidence that building rates
should increase by up to threefold. Green Belt areas
are at risk here too.
Green Belt land earmarked for development
A suitable site for a housing estate?
The adopted Local Plan for Reigate & Banstead
contains up to 1,400 new homes in two “urban
extensions” on Green Belt land. Details will be worked
up in the next few years. Officially these areas are only
a backup for the latter period of the Plan (after 2021)
if sufficient new housing is not built within the
existing urban areas to meet identified need.
Despite shelving its original plan due in large part to
public pressure, Guildford council is continuing its
work on a Core Strategy and three “strategic locations”
in the Green Belt are likely to be considered. They
total 6,350 dwellings. Other areas at risk, mainly in the
villages in the Green Belt, amount to 3,350 new homes,
bringing the possible total for the whole of Guildford
to more than 10,000 new homes on Green Belt land.
There are actual planning applications at one
strategic location, the former Wisley airfield, for
2,100 dwellings, and in Effingham village for 310
dwellings. Both are being actively resisted by local
community groups, with CPRE support.
Runnymede has undertaken a Green Belt boundary
review and many urban fringe areas are at risk
including the former DERA site where 1,200 homes
are proposed. Last year’s Green Belt review in Woking
has identified 12 large development sites, totally up
to 1,800 new homes, situated mainly to the south of
the town. Waverley has also undertaken a Green Belt
review, identifying three areas of potential Green Belt
loss. Surrey Heath will require a Green Belt review
as part of its new Local Plan process.
Epsom & Ewell has been able to meet its housing
figures in the urban area and at present the Green
Belt is under less pressure in the borough than in
many other parts of Surrey, though this may change
in the near future.
Keith Tothill

Page 4 Surrey Voice – Spring 2015
Surrey Voice – Spring 2015 Page 5
Before...
...After
CHERKLEY – A SAD END TO A LONG AND BITTER FIGHT
The long-running Cherkley saga has come to a sad
end. In late November we had the news that the
Supreme Court had refused permission for an
appeal. Up to that point we had been hopeful that,
despite being faced by the combined forces of
rapacious developers and ill-informed councillors,
the legal challenge launched by the Cherkley
Campaign action group, with CPRE’s support,
would save this precious stretch of countryside
on the edge of the North Downs.
Given the diametrically opposed judgments of the High
Court (which had overturned Mole Valley council’s
decision to grant planning permission) and the Court of
Appeal (which had reversed that decision), we had hoped
the Supreme Court would at least be willing to hear our
case. The Supreme Court’s decision not to allow our
appeal coincided with the denial of our other application
for judicial review of Mole Valley council’s decision to
approve the Landscape Management Plan for Cherkley,
which permitted construction to commence at a time
when legal proceedings were still pending. This case
concerned breach of the Environmental Impact
Assessment Regulations due to the absence of sufficient
habitat surveys and public consultation. The developers
had failed to identify the ecological value of the site and
its importance as a UK Priority Biodiversity Habitat. The
court did not consider the merits of the case but denied
leave on “technical grounds”.
Leatherhead Downs had already suffered months of
onslaught from earth moving machinery but with the
main litigation at an end the injunction over
construction work at the Forty Acre Field fell away. This
unspoilt habitat, next to the European Special Area of
Conservation on the Box Hill Estate, is being rapidly
infilled and re-profiled to accommodate five holes of
golf. Chalk grassland on the North Downs is high in
biodiversity, nutrient poor and free draining. This makes
it unsuitable for the playable surfaces required of the
proposed “world class” golf course. Longshot, the
developers, have applied to the Environment Agency for
a licence to abstract water from their newly drilled 300m
borehole in Mickleham. The water will be pumped over to
the irrigation lake and, from a second pumping station,
will supply 1,257 sprinklers over the eighteen hole
course. Assuming the Beaverbrook Golf Club can attract
400 debenture holders construction of the course and
club house should be completed by July 2016.
Cherkley Campaign fought this application on planning
and environmental grounds. The council’s planning
officers had recommended refusal due to harm to a
protected landscape, the lack of need for a golf course of
any description in Leatherhead, let alone at this location,
and the change of activity from farm and residential to
commercial being inappropriate development in the
Green Belt with no “very special circumstances” put
forward to override the harm. The High Court judge
agreed that the decision to grant permission did not
stack up and quashed it on those grounds, even going so
far as to call Mole Valley council’s decision “perverse”.
He explicitly criticised the council for merely “paying
lip-service” to Green Belt protections. However, the Court
of Appeal restored the permission, effectively saying
that planning decisions are political decisions. Local
councillors were free, said the court, to conclude that the
landscape would be “conserved and enhanced” by the
construction of a golf course; the supporting text in the
Local Plan referring to the requirement to demonstrate
“need” was not saved or material to the case, neither was
the imperative to direct golf courses away from our best
landscapes in the Surrey Hills. And in any event “need”
can mean “demand” even if that demand is supplied
from far beyond Mole Valley – or even our shores. This
is an especially horrifying ruling as it means that any
development proposal here in Surrey (or anywhere in
England) that is supported or promoted by international
investors could be deemed to be “meeting a need”,
whatever the local community might say.
The future of our countryside should be above politics.
However, despite the Government’s professed belief in
“localism”, it is really the drive for unrestrained
economic growth that counts, and this means local
councillors can apparently ignore the planning policy
along with expert advice from conservationists, and a
mountain of objections from residents, and vote through
any development they like, regardless of the
consequences for the countryside, landscape and
biodiversity. In this case Mole Valley’s development
control committee voted, by the narrowest of margins,
in favour of a private golf course enabling the Cherkley
Estate to be “opened to the public” as a luxury spa hotel
and golf resort for the super-rich, destroying farmland
and wildflower meadows in the process. A disaster for
Surrey, and for the planning system.
Kristina Kenworthy and Andy Smith

Page 6 Surrey Voice – Spring 2015
VOLUNTEER
VACANCIES
The CPRE Surrey Branch currently has the
following volunteer vacancies:
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Events Organiser
Marketing Adviser
Planning Liaison Advisers (specifically in the
Spelthorne, Surrey Heath and Woking districts)
Planning Adviser (to join our Surrey Branch
office team)
For more information on what each role entails,
please look at our website www.cpresurrey.org.uk
or contact the Branch Director on 01372 362720,
email: cpre.surrey@btconnect.com.
100 CLUB WINNERS
Congratulations to the latest
CPRE Surrey 100 Club winners:
October 2014
1st Prize: Mrs I Tanner, Ashtead
2nd Prize: Mr J Gooderham, Ottershaw
November 2014
1st Prize: Lady L O’Connor, Betchworth
2nd Prize: Mr W Callingham, Albury
December 2014
1st Prize: Mr G Couper, West Ewell
2nd Prize: The Chertsey Society
January 2015
1st Prize: Mrs M Nelson, Ashtead
2nd Prize: Mr C Stuart, Farnham
February 2015
1st Prize: Mrs U Fleming, Ashtead
2nd Prize: Mr J King, Godstone
Members of the 100 Club have the chance every
month to win cash. There are two prizes each month
– £40 and £20. The annual subscription is just £12
(or a multiple of £12, depending on how many draw
numbers you would like). Half of all subscriptions
are returned as prize money, with the rest going
towards our campaigning work. If you would like to
join the 100 Club, please contact Ann Murphy at
the CPRE Surrey Branch office in Leatherhead.
The truth about
England’s
“housing crisis”
“Housing makes politicians go soft in the head.
An old Whitehall saw holds that England ‘needs’
250,000 new houses a year, because that is how
many households are ‘formed’. The figure, a
hangover from wartime predict-and-provide, takes
no account of occupancy rates, geography of
demand, migration or housing subsidy, let alone
price. Everyone thinks they ‘need’ a better house.
… Few Britons are homeless. Most enjoy living
space of which the Japanese can only dream.
Yet the Economist magazine cites the 250,000
figure at every turn. The Institute of Economic Affairs
wails that housing has become ‘unaffordable for
young people’. A recent FT article declared, ‘The
solution to the housing crisis lies in the green belt.’
This is all nonsense. The chief determinant of house
prices is wealth, subsidy and the supply of money.
During the credit boom, prices soared in America and
Australia, where supply was unconstrained. Less
than 10 per cent of Britain’s housing market is in
new building. Although clearly it is a good thing if
more houses are available, there is no historical
correlation between new builds and price.”
Simon Jenkins, “The war on rural England”
in The Spectator, 28 February 2015
10% DISCOUNT for
CPRE members at
Cotswold Outdoor
CPRE has negotiated a special 10% discount* for members
to use on the current season’s product ranges at Cotswold
Outdoor Ltd and is available for use both in store and online.
The unique code for CPRE members is: AF-CPRE-M7.
How to use the code:
● In-store – please present the letter included with this
newsletter, a membership card or your booking
confirmation details to obtain your discount.
● Online – register your address details at
www.cotswoldoutdoor.com or login. When ready to
checkout, key in the code in the Promotional Code box.
● Click & Collect – available for use from most stores, see:
www.cotswoldoutdoor.com/clickandcollect.
● Mail Order – please provide your address details to the
sales staff quoting the unique code when ordering.
Go to www.cotswoldoutdoor.com for more information.
* Terms and conditions: not to be used in conjunction with any other offers
or discounts. Offer expires 30.11.2015.
Surrey Voice – Spring 2015 Page 7
What would a 2nd runway
at Gatwick mean for Surrey?
SURREY VILLAGES
AND COUNTRYSIDE
UNDER THREAT FROM
GATWICK EXPANSION
(photos courtesy of the Gatwick
Area Conservation Campaign)
Loss of tranquillity and air quality
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Double the number of aircraft on existing flight paths
Almost double the number of flights
More concentrated flight paths, causing intense
aircraft noise nuisance for those unfortunate enough
to live underneath
Aircraft noise much more intrusive in countryside
(low background noise) than urban areas
More night flights (between 11pm and 7am)
More planes, more road traffic, more air pollution
Loss of countryside to new housing
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Up to 40,000 new houses – equivalent to a new town
the size of Crawley
This is in addition to new housing already planned in
current Local Plans
New schools, hospitals, clinics and other community
amenities – but where is the investment coming from?
Widespread urbanisation, serious pressure on local
services, and the loss of precious green spaces
Road and rail chaos
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Over 136,000 extra
vehicles on our roads
every day
Gridlock on the M25
and M23
More congestion on
A-roads, in villages
and rural lanes
Over 110,000 passengers
per day on trains
Standing room only in carriages!
Planned investment in rail will only address current
needs, not Gatwick’s 2nd runway!

Page 8 Surrey Voice – Spring 2015
Annual Meeting
The Annual Meeting of CPRE Surrey will be held on:
Friday 3rd July 2015 at 7.30pm
in the Abraham Dixon Hall, The Institute,
67 High Street, Leatherhead, Surrey KT22 8AH
The theme for this year’s meeting will be
“Protecting your local countryside”
The Keynote Speaker will be Kate Ashbrook,
General Secretary of the Open Spaces Society (Britain’s
oldest conservation body). Kate Ashbrook will be joined
by a panel of speakers, all local activists here in Surrey:
Flip Cargill (Leech Grove Wood Action Group, Leatherhead),
Jacquetta Fewster (Mole Valley Green Party),
Catherine Sayer (Oxted & Limpsfield Residents
Group and CPRE Surrey Board member)
and Karen Stevens (Save the Hogs Back, Guildford).
Doors open 7.00pm ● Admission free
All welcome
Refreshments available
CPRE Surrey Branch
The Institute, 67 High Street, Leatherhead,
Surrey KT22 8AH. Tel: 01372 362720
Email: cpre.surrey@btconnect.com
www.cpresurrey.org.uk Registered Charity No. 1106245