After 16 years on the Executive and four years chairing the Group, John Baylis stood down as our Chairman at the AGM in May 2011. The Group is now represented on the Executive by Martin Taplin, and John Baylis acts as Secretary to the Group. The Group has no Chairman at present.

The Group continues to meet at the Council offices every three weeks to look at recent planning applications and has written 56 letters in the eleven months since the last Newsletter.

Matters of note that have arisen since the Group’s annual report circulated with the AGM papers are given below.

Consultations

Meeting on infrastructure with Tony Rooth, Leader of the Council

Three of us met with Tony Rooth, leader of the Council, on the 19^th April to discuss infrastructure funding.  Jenny Wicks, Lead Councillor for Environment, Keith Taylor, Chairman of the GBC Planning Committee and Carol Humphrey, Head of GBC Planning Services also attended. The meeting was useful for understanding the processes we will need to influence to try to make something happen. We hope that some ambition can emerge from the various strategies and that GBC can avoid granting any major consents before some mechanism can be found for securing more significant infrastructure contributions.  

Carol Humphrey said that the GBC Core Strategy will look forward as far as 2030. Full consultation will be in May 2012.  There is a firm target of April 2014 for final adoption. This is driven by dates in the draft Community Infrastructure Levy (CIL) legislation. The Town Centre Masterplan will be pressed forward ahead of the Core Strategy (see below).

A paper will go to the Council recommending that GBC institutes a CIL for the Borough (went to GBC Executive on 29^th September).

Various other matters, including desirable major infrastructure projects, Green Belt, Localism and Westfield were also discussed.

Town Centre Masterplan

Members of the Group attended the GBC Town Centre Masterplan Event at Millmead on 23^rd June 2011. This was followed by a period of public consultation. Our response is set out below:

“We are most grateful that senior Council Officers have met with us on two occasions to discuss the major issues which will shape the Masterplan: on 26th August 2010 we met with Chris Mansfield and Tanya Mankoo-Flatt and on 6th July 2011 we met with Carol Humphrey and Chris Mansfield. 

The focus of discussion at the latter meeting was the concern of the Council over maintaining Guildford's role as a major retail centre and, to that end, the desire to attract an anchor store. We agreed that it was important to maintain the commercial attractiveness of the town as a major retail centre but we also agreed that commercial attractiveness depended not only on the retail offer but also on ease of accessibility for shoppers as well as for those who work in the town.

Given the physical constraints of the town centre, Park and Ride provision, both existing and proposed, is a key means of facilitating accessibility and is therefore relevant to the Masterplan. Good provision for access by bus, both in terms of location and quality of provision, is also of key importance. Our view is that the present bus station is probably the optimum position, in terms of convenience for shoppers, but we recognised the concern that retaining a bus station in area of the Friary Extension has a major impact on space which might otherwise be used for retail development. With that issue in mind, we discussed alternative ideas for the provision of buses and the many complicating factors. Given the importance of good access by buses we consider it critical that no decision to remove the present requirement for a bus station on the area of the Friary Extension should be taken unless and until a satisfactory alternative proposal has been evaluated and agreed.  We also reiterated our long standing objective of the need to secure a much improved pedestrian route between the mainline railway station and the town centre avoiding using Bridge Street and the need to cross, at grade, the busy Onslow Street.

In the context of ‘Place Making’ the Society is very supportive of the desirability of extending pedestrianisation within the town centre in particular by securing pedestrianisation, partial or total, of North Street provided measures are taken to ensure that traffic congestion elsewhere is not increased. The Society has also long campaigned for the town to recognise the potential of the River Wey as a distinctive and attractive feature of the town and, to that end, we would like to see clear policies and proposals to secure enhancement by securing additional areas of river side open space, provision of  planting and increased public access.

Finally, the Society considered that the Town Centre Masterplan should set clear directions to achieve the above interlinked commercial, environmental and transport objectives. Preferred facilities for buses and for pedestrian routes should be set out, together with a strategy for achieving them. This strategy should precede any development decisions by the Council on any of the major individual sites – both in its role as Planning Authority and as landowner - because decisions taken in the absence of an agreed strategy might give away too much to developers or might be so contrary to the strategy that they prejudice or prevent its successful implementation.”

National Policy Planning Framework

The Group has recently submitted a response to the National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) consultation. The NPPF, 52 pages long, is intended to replace all existing government planning policy and guidance, at present contained in various documents totalling about 1,000 pages. The endeavour is praiseworthy, but has been the subject of much press criticism because of the emphasis on growth, called “sustainable development” in the document.

The main concerns are:

• Unsuitable and vague definition of sustainable development
• Local authorities are urged to approve applications wherever possible.
• Transition problems: no local plans can be compliant until some time after the NPPF is published and until then applications have to comply only with the NPPF.
• Insufficient protection for the historic environment
• The 'presumption' in favour of 'sustainable development'.
• Lack of reference to geographic and other local factors, use of brown field sites, local culture in the wider sense
• Sense of loss of local control, for example in narrowing the role of SPG's

Other Consultations

In May we prepared and submitted the Society’s responses to GBC Consultations on drafts of two new policy documents: Community Engagement Strategy and Community Involvement in Planning.

Members of the Group attended the GBC Neighbourhood Planning Event at Millmead on 21^st June. The Council demonstrated a positive attitude to neighbourhood plans while at the time saying how expensive and difficult it would be for amenity groups to produce them.  The University and business groups in the town centre may be in a better position to do so.

We also responded to the GBC ‘Who Needs Housing?’ questionnaire.

We attended the consultation by the Baptist Church on proposals for redevelopment of their Millmead Centre. The proposals were unobjectionable.

In September we submitted a response picking out a number of shortcomings in the Town and Country Planning (Local Planning) (England) Regulations [2012] Consultation draft.

Applications for houses at the back of Guildown Avenue

Despite much local objection, our own best efforts, and refusals by the GBC Planning committee, approval has now been given for houses in the back gardens of all the houses in Guildown Avenue backing on to the ‘Green Lane’ (even numbered houses 10 to 26), except for number 20 which has not applied. On 14^th June we spoke at an informal public hearing before an inspector for appeals by 10 and 12 against refusal of their applications to renew planning permissions. The appellant had requested the hearing. On 15^th June the decision for a previously lodged appeal for number 18, was announced: it had not had a public hearing. The inspector, a different one, allowed it, thus vitiating the 10 and 12 appeals which were then also allowed. GBC then had little option but to allow subsequent applications from numbers 16 and 22. Number 14 has a 2007 outline permission and numbers 24 and 26 were allowed on appeals in 2008 and 2009.