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The South East Plan will wreck Guildford

The Government’s South East Plan threatens to wreck Guildford. Unsustainable building targets will be imposed from above for the next twenty years. The Green Belt will be ripped up in Merrow, Burpham and Clandon and on the Worplesdon-Woking border. The result will be intense over-development and more traffic and congestion, ruining the character of Guildford and letting urban sprawl spill out into the countryside.

It doesn’t have to be this way. Guildford residents sent 4,800 replies to the South East Plan consultation, over half of all respondents. If Labour Ministers simply ignore such overwhelming public opinion, there is a real scope for judicial review. Legal challenges to the Government’s flawed eco-town programme have shown how even Ministers can be made to think again.

Moreover, David Cameron has pledged that the next Conservative Government will scrap the whole tier of regional planning, including the South East Plan. Local councils will decide the right level of development for their locality. Instead of top-down targets, councils will be able to keep the council tax and business rate receipts from new building, rather than the money effectively being snatched away by Whitehall. This will ensure that where new homes are built – such as on the genuine brownfield site of the DEFRA building in Merrow – there is funding to provide the necessary infrastructure to support it.

The South East Plan is not inevitable, and we must fight it every step of the way.

Cllr Sheridan Westlake
Borough councillor for Merrow

Graham Ellwood
Conservative county councillor candidate for Merrow & Burpham

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