Events & Meetings

Developer Exhibition

IMPORTANT - Bewley Homes Consultation Event

If you go to this event please remember

• this is a presentation by the proposed builders, although the people you get to talk to may be their agents

• Guildford Borough Council will not be there

• it will probably follow a set format. They will have a lot of plans prepared on boards stood on easels. Each easel will have someone standing beside it to engage you in conversation or answer questions

• the plans will show lovely, well-spaced housing and plenty of green areas for relaxation

• they will try to convince you that this development will be the best thing for the area, and how much better we, in the local community, will all be if it goes ahead

• these will probably not even be draft plans. They will be something they have in their office that they wheel out at all consultation events to convince the local populous of their good intentions

• they will almost certainly not be the plans that go into the Council with the application – these come later after they have listened to all of our objections

THE REASON FOR THIS EXHIBITION IS SO THAT THE BUILDERS CAN GAUGE THE RESISTANCE THEY MAY GET IN THE LOCAL COMMUNITY, AND THEY WANT TO FIND OUT EXACTLY WHAT OBJECTIONS WE HAVE. WHAT WE MUST NOT DO IS GIVE AWAY ANY ADVANTAGE WE MAY HAVE.

We need to let these people know that they are going to have a major fight on their hands without letting them know all of the specifics.

• Don't rattle off 10 reasons why you think that building these houses would be bad

• Don't get into specific reasons

• Don't give them 25 specific reasons or ways we will fight them, otherwise when the planning application does go in to Guildford Borough Council, the builders will have answers for all of our objections – even if they are total lies, they will have answers

• Do keep to generalities, i.e. I moved to this area because of all of the fields and open space, I don’t want it ruined. Or, we like Ash and Tongham being two villages and don’t want them to become one

• Do make sure you tell them they are going to have a massive fight on their hands

Don’t forget places like the Quadrant. When they built the houses there, the planning application showed multiple entrances/exits to the site, and a doctors surgery and shops on the plans. What they actually built was more densely packed housing with only one entrance/exit, no doctors surgery and no shops. More money for the builder. This happens over and over again - once they get planning permission they do as they please.

One final note. We are incurring costs for doing land searches and buying various items such as clip boards etc. These costs are not likely to increase massively, but we can’t expect a few people to be out of pocket on behalf of the rest of us.
I am therefore going to propose having a small “Fighting Fund” to meet these costs as they arise. To achieve this I propose that the people who are stationed outside the Tongham Community Centre on Friday, have with them a Fighting Fund bucket. If everyone can drop £1 in the bucket we will collect enough to pay existing costs, and also have enough to meet further small on-going expenses.

Thank you all for your support

Graham Eyre - Ash Residents Association