News on Horsell Common


		Heather Farm Questions Dear Mr. Durrant , I agree with the Committee and your statement in the The Common (Summer 2006) that Heather Farm should be put to use compatible with preserving the Common. That would almost certainly be helped by a 'change in use' to B1c and B8. On Monday and Tuesday I looked at the PLAN having objected in early April before the AGM. English Nature objects. The Transport Assessment of January 2006 from DMMason could, I think be pulled apart: for example there is the sentence '… queuing on the A3046 Chobham Road is unlikely' which is not true Mondays to Fridays. At the very latest I shall object seriously if and when a waste disposal plant is planned UNLESS · the Common can be preserved as it is and · the traffic flow will let us turn right out of Common Close at peak times. We live in Common Close, 500m . from Heather Farm. Please let me have your view about timing objections. Sincerely, John Wheeler --------------------------- Dear Mr Wheeler Thank you for your email. We have tried to be pragmatic inasmuch as unless someone can come up with a viable alternative use for the site, we are likely to be stuck with around 4 acres of buildings on a 16 acre site from which the owners and their investors will fight tooth and nail to extract commercial value. As much as we would like to see Heather Farm returned to common, we therefore doubt the reality of this happening. It is not unknown for sites such as these to be deliberately allowed to become a nuisance to an area and this must absolutely, for the sake of the common, not be permitted to happen. I am therefore glad that you can see that the currently proposed uses are perhaps the least of the possible evils with which we have the potential to be presented; they are also significantly modified from the original plans that the sellers had for the site. Due to English Nature's valuable and considerable powers and knowledge, they will have to be modified again, or perhaps even nullified. We shall have to wait and see. As I said in my statement, HCPS is anxious about the plans that both Woking and Surrey have pencilled-in for Heather Farm. Rumour was that there would be more information from Woking by the end of May. We are still waiting. Surrey CC will initially, I believe, consider whether their Waste Plan is good enough to be put out to public consultation. I cannot at this stage, without consulting other Trustees, say that HCPS will object if and when that happens, but I strongly suspect that as we have thus far done, we will take the lead of English Nature because they have the expertise in environmental pollution that we lack and because we believe we can safely rely on their advice. On the face of it a waste plant in that position sounds a very unattractive proposition and the Trust remains to be convinced by Surrey or Woking that their plans would be compatible with the adjacent SPA/SSSI. Our only power over the situation is our ownership of the track, and our biggest concern is not to lose control of this because if we do, we will lose the ability to make sure that future users of the track will comply with whatever is required of them for the protection of the common. If you look at the government Internet site that is mentioned in The Common, you will see that vacant, derelict sites are actually easier targets for CPO's; another reason that we would prefer to see Heather Farm either remaining commercially viable but in a way that is as close as possible to the previous use - which attracted no criticism of which I am aware when it was there - or returned to green. Thus, a second reason that deterioration of the site over an extended time must therefore not be allowed to happen, however remote the possibility of a CPO might be. As for your concerns about being able to turn out of Common Close, this is more a question for Highways than for HCPS, but I nevertheless understand that being unable to turn would, if it happens, be problematic for you and for others in the close. I very much hope that that scenario will not arise for you. You are the first member to take up my invitation to write with any questions following my statement in The Common. Would you object to me posting question and answer on the HCPS site? If yes, would you be happy for your name to be used, or not? Yours sincerely John Durrant ----------------------------------------- Dear Mr. Durrant , Thank you for your detailed reply; as you say you are being pragmatic. It so happened yesterday that five of us from Common Close ran into one another (at Sainsbury's) and Tony Stevens made the point that he had counted 23 other farms around here all, I think; in the Green Belt. Now if their owners should see more profit in ‘light industry or storage' how could the Council refuse planning permission having already granted it once? I shall follow up my initial objection to WBC with this question. Perhaps there's a good answer. Perhaps HCPS owns the access tracks. At the moment we may be in the dilemma of facing two opposite but permanent threats however unlikely: · a CPO for a derelict site and · treating like applications alike. That would be nasty. I keep asking about the proposals from WBC and SCC for waste treatment. There was an item in The Telegraph (I think) that the EU directs waste to be treated because The Netherlands and Luxemburg are running out of landfill – big guns for new and novel ways. If the farms have Nightjars, Dartford Warblers, Nightjars, Water Voles and so on perhaps other directives from the EU can be applied. In Common Close we are very fortunate being surrounded by the SPA/SSSI Horsell Common. We are, however, starting to have our own special problem with the traffic. This has little to do with the HCPS and could be the reason for own special objections. One solution for us, however, might be a small roundabout at the beginning of the Close. Land for this might be necessary from the Common. That is just a thought. Next week I shall check up on who owns what at the mouth of the Close. If you think it could be of use I agree to your using what I sent and of my name as you think fit. Yours sincerely, John Wheeler --------------------------------- Dear Mr Wheeler Thanks again. I think I can answer the question as to why other farms might not benefit from applying for industrial use: Heather Farm is only a farm in name. In planning terms - which might not always seem logical to you or me - Heather Farm is a Sui-Generis designation. I'm not a planning expert but HCPS's planning expert explained that it therefore has a planning designation that is specific to Heather Farm and does not fall within any Use Classes Order, example B1/B8. Agricultural uses would have their own Use Classes. Mushroom-growing was a factory process that involved workers starting at 4am - probably earlier than most farms. Also the establishment used, we understand, some 800,000 litres of gasoline oil a year, which again is not something the average farm would use; presumably this fuel exhausted straight into the atmosphere once it was used. If it did, it seems remarkable that nobody realised or commented on it. Anyway, the simple answer is Heather Farm was not a farm in recent years. It was a farm many decades ago, hence its name. As for the traffic issues for Common Close, the first port of call would be Highways. If there is a plan that would involve using common land to build a roundabout then we would have to look at it. If common land is involved then the law requires that the area of land that would be used would have to be replaced by land from somewhere else. I'm not certain of the status of the land in question but if it is sensitive land then it might not be possible to take it out of the common. Kind regards and thanks for agreeing to me posting your comments. I will be doing so shortly. I'm in the process of redesigning the navigation around the site so it probably won't go up for a few days. John Durrant