AUTUMN 2017 NEWSLETTER Registered Charity No: 287803 1 | Page PLANNING UPDATE by Hannah Lane LOCAL PLAN The last Consultation was the one in May-June this year on extra/or alterations to the sites proposed to be removed from the Green Belt (GB). This included a reduction in the possible number of houses to be built on `Lower Ottershaw`. This time over 1,000 responses were received throughout the Borough, compared with over 700 in August 2016. The Travellers Accommodation Assessment has now commenced. It is anticipated that a draft report will be issued to the Council in November with the study being finalised before the end of the year. RBC has not yet published the date for the final Public Consultation that will be at the same time as the Plan will be submitted to the Inspectorate for the Examination in Public (EiP). Only after this will the Inspector rule on the Plan and it will be finalised and implemented. The most interesting development for Ottershaw is that RBC has had a Consultation with a specialist barrister on Local Plans to advise on the RBC Local Plan and its viability going forward. His main comment was:- FINALISING THE COUNCIL’S TRANSPORT AND INFRASTRUCTURE EVIDENCE WITH A PARTICULAR EMPHASIS ON DRIVING FORWARD THE A320 STUDY WHICH MR LEADER DESCRIBED AS THE ‘SPINE OF THE LOCAL PLAN’. A rare peaceful scene of Guildford Road Looking up Church Hill, Guildford Road In other words much of RBC`s future development is on or in the area of the A320 (i.e. will filter onto the A320) and the A320 cannot take it in its present structure. RBC, Woking, Surrey Heath and Surrey County Councils have formed a Working Group to look at this problem of the A320. Surrey Heath is taking the lead and has appointed a Consultant, who will report back by the end of the year. If the Consultant comes up with a plan, the 2nd criteria is where is the money to come from? If either, or both, questions are not answered, it leaves RBC with a problem on its proposed housing sites. But if the Consultant does come up with an answer, and the money is found, what is the effect on Ottershaw and the Otter Roundabout likely to be? A forward funding bid by SCC for the A320 project was submitted by the deadline of 28 September to HCA Housing Infrastructure Fund. There are no details at the moment from RBC. www.facebook.com/ottershawsociety www.ottershawsociety.org 2 | Page NEW GOVERNMENT CONSULTATION TO INCREASE HOUSING NUMBERS. In September Sajid Javid, Communities Secretary, announced a Consultation of setting increased housing numbers for Local Plans. More housing is needed than in the present Local Plans, especially low cost. Housing numbers will in future be based on a complicated fixed formula across all Councils, that is the price of houses weighted against the average wages/salaries of each Council area. This will result in increases in the present Local Plan housing numbers mainly in the south-east. Local Plans will be done every 5 years, not 20-25 as now. We do not yet know what RBC will be doing to implement these new rules. Whatever happens to the present RBC Plan, housing numbers in RBC will be going up over the revised upward figures given in the last Consultation in May 2017. PLANNING APPLICATIONS MEET YOUR FOXHILLS After three Consultations earlier in the year, expect COUNCILLORS to see the following Planning Applications submitted to Runnymede Borough Council (RBC) Emma Bancroft this autumn:- Conservative PARKLANDS, BITTAMS LANE Date Elected: Chertsey Parklands are proposing to build over 200 2017 (next election 2018) Telephone: 07795 386291 flats on part of the site on Bittams Lane on the Committees: Housing, other side of the roundabout opposite the Overview and Scrutiny entrance to St. Peter`s Hospital. In addition a Care Select, Crime and Disorder, Home is currently being built where there was an Licensing office block on the other side of this site. ST. PETER`S HOSPITAL Dannielle Khalique This development of c 400 houses will be on what Conservative is left of the old Botleys Hospital site in the Date Elected: ownership of St. Peter`s Hospital. That is the area 2015 (next election 2019) Telephone: 07881 223405 of the old `technical ` buildings, including the tall Committees: Community chimney, and up to Stonehill Road to include the Services, Overview and derelict walled gardens, greenhouses and ice Scrutiny, Crime and Disorder house (a Grade 2 listed building) of the original Botleys Estate. Entrances to be on Stonehill Holloway Hill Roads. This development will provide Iftikhar Chaudhri the money to re-build 2 of the 3 areas of staff Conservative Date Elected: housing on the hospital site. 2012 (next election 2020) LONGCROSS (DERA) Mobile: 07859 033216 Work is well advanced on the north part of the Duties: Mayor site, `Upper Longcross`, and the first tranche of Committees: Currently houses are now for sale. The next application will Mayor therefore not on any be for the south of the M3, to be called `Lower Committees Longcross`. www.facebook.com/ottershawsociety www.ottershawsociety.org 3 | Page OTHER PLANNING MATTERS:- A HISTORY OF ROAD NAMES WILLOW FARM site has been granted IN OTTERSHAW. No.1. a further 3 years temporary residential permission. This is to allow RBC to By Hannah Lane adopt the new Local Plan which will Have you ever wondered about the history make provision for new of the road in which you live? Well read gypsy/travellers pitches within the on and let Hannah Lane enlighten you on Borough. the history of Ottershaw’s roads. BROX END NURSERY developer A” GUILDFORD ROAD Dominion withdrew its application for 40 houses at the RBC Planning Committee in July, but continued with its application for 12 dwellings. This was refused as not being the most effective use of the site. FAIROAKS AIRPORT and WOODHAM LANE proposed development sites in adjacent Boroughs are still being considered by the relevant Councils, no decision at the present time. Coach Road junction off Guilford Road Likewise any consideration of the Christmas Tree Farm and Great Grove The whole of the present road south from Farm will not come up until RBC holds Chertsey to the boundary with Woking its EiP in 2018. Borough at Dunford Bridge is called the MCLAREN has a new CEO and Guildford Road, A320. Previously it was Chairman from November 2017. The 2 called the Chertsey Road/Lane from outstanding planning permissions, one Chertsey to Ottershaw or Chertsey Lane on the land to the east of the A320 End, the latter being also the name of the and further facilities on their existing original hamlet at the Otter crossroads. site on the west of the A320, are still From The Otter Inn up the hill to the within the time scale that they could Church it was called Church Hill, and still is be finally signed off for approval with by some residents. The Otter Inn to the Woking Council or withdrawn. top of the hill has also been Ottershaw Road, or Woking Road in the 1860`s, then THE SOCIETY WISHES TO THANK Timber Hill down to Dunford Bridge. HANNAH LANE FOR ALL THE WORK CROSS LANE, FROM GUILDFORD ROAD TO SHE HAS CONTINUED TO DO IN CHOBHAM ROAD KEEPING THE SOCIETY ABREAST OF The older residents also know this as `The LOCAL PLANNING ISSUES AND Back Lane`. This is an old road shown on REPRESENTING THE SOCIETY ON THE the old maps. It is now Footpath No. 32 “COMMUNITY PLANNING PANEL”. www.facebook.com/ottershawsociety www.ottershawsociety.org 4 | Page At the top of the road the Kings built their new house of Tudor Cottage (Manor) when they bought the land either side of Coach Road from the Fletcher family in the early 1930`s. BEECH HALL c1955 Church Hill, Guildford Road northwards These houses were built in 1983 on the from Meath Cottage site of the original Vicarage of the Church. CHAWORTH ROAD This land had been given to the This road was built in 1958 by W Deakin Ecclesiastical Commissioners by Sir Edward on the site of Ottermead House when it Colebrooke (Ottershaw Park), shortly after was demolished. Ottermead House was the Church had been built in 1864. It was a built in 1892 by the Rev. Baron Hichens, large house of 10/11 bedrooms. The house Perpetual Curate of Ottershaw. He sold it became too big, so in 1934 it was sold for in 1898 to the Earl and Countess of Meath, a private school. Later it was converted see the article in the Spring 2017 into flats called Beech Hall. Newsletter. Earlier in the C19th it had been the brickworks of William Varden and Stephen Cheeseman. COACH ROAD A private unmade road, ownership unknown. It leads to the entrance to Ottershaw Park from the north between the two Lodges. Some speculate that this The Vicarage, C1920 taken from Postcard in was an earlier route of the Guildford Road, J.Athersuch collection which would have swung round in the WOODLANDS CLOSE shallow arc to come out further down It is an unmade private road. Built 1932/4 towards Dunford Bridge. But more likely to by Mr. Herbert Wells, and his brother have been the new entrance drive to George of Chertsey. This was confirmed Thomas Sewell`s new mansion of to the author by his granddaughter Mrs. Ottershaw Park built in 1761 from the Sanger. BUT Mrs. Mavis Swenarton says Chertsey direction, crossing the waste land they are Walter George Tarrent, 1875- soon after the crossroads, at the end of 1942, houses, the builder of St.