Archive for the ‘WBC’ Category

The WCRA objection letter is attached.

• WCRA – Access 2 Objection – no – 20090929

Please remember that the deadline for submitting comments on the application is 30th September 2009.

Title: Deadline for Objections to Access Application No. 2
Location: Woking Borough Council
Description: All objections must be submitted before the 30th September. Remember at least 10 objections must be submitted to obtain speakers rights at the planning committee.
Date: 2009-09-30

A 2nd planning application for the “Moor Lane” site has been submitted by WBC.  The reference number for the application is PLAN/2009/0764.

For those of you who struggle to access the WBC Planning Portal (and I know there are many) the relevant documents are attached below:

• Application
• Tree Survey
• Ecological Appraisal
• Revised Transport Assessment
• Revised Design & Access Statement

"Idealised" Site Layout

The same old access roads

Balfour Junction "improvement" alternatives

Proposed Balfour Avenue Widening

Good bye tree lined avenue

All rights acknowledged.

WBC are looking for more volunteers for their Citizens Panel – see details below:

We are also updating the Citizen’s panel to ensure it is representative of the borough. We are particularly looking for younger people (aged between 16 and 25) and particularly residents from the following areas.
-          Hermitage and Knaphill South
-          Horsell East and Woodham
-          Kingfield and Westfield
-          Maybury and Sheerwater
-          Mayford and Sutton Green
-          St Johns and Hook Heath
-          Brookwood
-          Goldsworth West
-          Old Woking
 
It will be appreciated If you could help us to get more residents to sign up for the Citizen’s panel.  They can find more information on the website and sign up online.   www.woking.gov.uk/citizenspanel

More money, less service? All in the name of environmental responsibility – you decide…

Press release and official letter attached.

From: Joanne Reid <Joanne.Reid@woking.gov.uk>
Date: Tue, Aug 18, 2009 at 8:48 AM
Subject: Changes to Woking Borough’s waste and recycling services
To:

To Whom It May Concern:

From September 2009, Woking Borough Council will be implementing a number of changes to the waste and recycling collection services. A brief outline of these changes is provided below and the Council would encourage you to forward these details onto members of your Residents Association and discuss these at your next arranged meeting. Also attached to this email is a PDF copy of the leaflet, which all households will receive as part of Borough-wide communications the first week of September 2009.

Your waste and recycling: residents will still receive an alternate weekly collection of waste and recycling, using the black and blue wheeled bins or sacks. As a reminder, the following items can be placed into the recycling container:

· aluminium foil (rolled up to no smaller than the size of a cricket ball)

· biscuit and sweet tins

· cardboard

· glass bottles and jars

· household paper (including coloured paper like the Yellow Pages)

· plastic bottles

· tins and cans

Day changes: The day and time of collections will change for most residents. Each household will receive a letter during the first week of September telling them exactly how their collection schedule will change. By changing residents collection schedules the service will have a more efficient vehicle-round structure, therefore lowering the carbon footprint and also enabling us to put in place food waste collections in January 2010.

Kerbside collection of household batteries: To prevent household batteries from going to landfill residents will be provided with a small plastic envelope along with their day change letter in September 2009. This should be filled with spent batteries. When the envelope is full it should be placed on the lid of the recycling bin or beside the blue recycling sacks. It will then be collected by Biffa operatives and put in a separate compartment on the collection vehicle.

Your garden waste service is changing: From 2 November 2009 the garden waste collection service will change. If residents wish to use the Council’s new garden waste collection service they will be asked to pay an annual fee to receive a green wheeled bin for their garden waste. A maximum of six wheeled bins can be provided. Households who currently use black and blue sacks and are unable to accommodate a wheeled bin can be issued with re-usable sacks. The clear plastic sacks will continue to be sold until October 2009 and collected until 18 December 2009. Residents are advised to purchase only what they know they will use.

Weekly collections of food waste: This service will initially be introduced in January 2010 to around 34,000 households. More difficult properties, such as flat developments will be addressed at a later date. During January 2010 participating households will be given one 7-litre silver kitchen caddy and one 23-litre lockable green outdoor bin. Residents will be able to recycle all food waste, which will be collected in the 23-litre green bin from the boundary of the property every week, on the same day as the waste and recycling. More details will be sent to participating residents inside the silver caddy in January 2010.

Full details of these changes can be found in the attached leaflet – this leaflet, along with a letter informing residents of their collection changes and a small plastic envelope for recycling batteries will be sent to all households in September 2009.

You have provided your email details as the point of contact for your Resident Association. If this is not the case, please do not hesitate to contact me on the number below, and I will remove your email address from our mailing list.

Kind regards,

Jo Reid

Support Assistant – Environmental Services

Woking Borough Council

(01483) 743492

Important_changes_to_your_waste_and_recycling_collection_services

[polldaddy poll=1971973]

The official minutes of the Planning Committee held on the 7th July 2009 have been published by WBC and are attached below for your information.

MOM – 20090707

A letter submitted to one of our younger local residents in the Woking News and Mail – 25th June 2009 (click on the picture to see it full size).

Copy of an letter from Priority Homes in response to an enquiry from a Moor Lane resident.

To:
(Resident)
Moor Lane
Woking
GU22 9QY

From:
Woking Brought Council
Civic Offices
Gloucester Square
Woking
Surrey
GU21 6YL

Telephone (01483) 755855
Facsimile (01483) 768746
DX 2931 WOKING
Email wokbc@woking.gov.uk
Website www.woking.gov.uk

14th July 2009

Dear (Resident)

RE: Moor Lane Development

Thank you for your email dated 4th July regarding access to the development site north of Moor Lane.

At this stage the Council is not intending to use Moor Lane as a main access to the development site.

The County Highways Authority (CHA) would require significant changes to the Moor Lane carriageway for it to be used as a major access to the site. Some of the land required to achieve the necessary road structure to provide an access from Moor Lane is not in the Council’s ownership and would therefore require a Compulsory Purchase Order (CPO) of 3rd party land. However, a CPO would be difficult to justify because a detailed options appraisal by an independent highways engineer identified viable alternatives (not requiring the use of Moor Lane) which satisfy CHA requirements.

The Council is therefore not intending an access from Moor Lane itself to be included in any access planning application to the development site that is made by the Council.

However, in a separate study the highways engineer has determined that it may be possible for a small number of units to be served from Moor Lane itself without requiring any carriageway widening or major junction improvements. If the small number of units requiring access were to the eastern end of the Moor Lane, it may require at least three passing places along the length of the narrowest part of this road. Those currently bidding for the rights to develop the site may wish to pursue this possibility.

Another option would be for the bidders to investigate the possibility of achieving an access, again, for a small number of units, at the western end of the site, where the Moor Lane carriageway widens. This approach would require an assessment on the deliverability of such an access bearing in mind the common land status of the land between the road and the site.

In summary, minor access from Moor Lane, if any, would be addressed by the bidders in consultation with the County Highways Authority at the Masterplan stage and by the Local Planning Authority at the detailed planning application stage.

We will be holding a public consultation on Saturday 19th September between 11am and 4pm at The Moorcroft Centre for the Community.

We hope we have helped in some way to answer your queries. The Council will continue to keep residents informed as the project progresses. If you would like further information regarding Priority Homes please refer to Woking Borough Council’s website at www.woking.gov.uk/priorityhomes or call 01483 743891

 

Yours sincerely

Priority Homes Team

For those who were unable to attend the meeting, here is a transcript of the speech that was delivered by Kerry. Enjoy!

Moor Lane Access – Planning Application – Reference: PLAN/2009/0434 
 

On behalf of fellow Westfield Common residents here tonight to show that they object to this application we would wish the committee to take the following into consideration 

Permission for the outline application in 2006 was conditional on sign-off of a legal agreement between WBC & SCC.  This in turn was conditional on WBC demonstrating that transport access was viable.   Neither have been done.  According to the Planning Officers report, outline permission has not been granted and this application becomes null and void in view of this.

The purpose of this application is to demonstrate that WBC can deliver access routes to the site free from significant financial risk, over which they can exercise more control and there is no guarantee that these are the access routes that will ultimately be developed. This is for the benefit of the developers in that allows WBC to demonstrate that the developers will not take on  exposure to financial risk and also allows WBC to move forward with the legal agreement previously mentioned.  WBC are attempting to manipulate the planning process to suit the requirements of the PFI / Planning lifecycle and this application is no more that an artifice to achieve this.

The application purports to represent 3 access points to the proposed development site whereas, in actuality, the sole point of access is via a single junction – namely that of Balfour Avenue onto Westfield Road.  We would contest that to narrow the application scope and ignore access onto the major road does not fulfil the councils own statement of intent made in a letter to residents dated 29/4/09 of determining “the most realistic and deliverable points of access”.

The application fails to justify how proposed access options can be “the most realistic and deliverable” as it includes no documentation clarifying the proposed development design and hence density.  It states its purpose as being to determine access points suitable for a development of 200 homes which is in direct conflict with the density of 470 homes stated in WBCs literature. Until the scale and design of the development is accurately and definitively decided any application for access routes cannot be realistically granted as there is insufficient information available to allow for fully informed decision.

A comprehensive review of the application in conjunction with professional analysis of the Transport Statement highlights significant flaws including indisputable analytical errors and the artificial deflation of traffic density by the use of  out of date data.  The planning officers report defers the issues raised by our review to consideration under future planning applications however, we would expect any publicly funded body to be legally bound to show a duty of care in the construction of its planning applications and would hope that the useful expedient of pushing problems forward to another application would not be permitted as a method of ignoring errors within this one.

In conclusion it is inappropriate and in our belief fundamentally wrong to propose an access application separate from the full application for the site, as without the details for the proposed development of the site it is impossible to properly debate the appropriateness of any proposed access.  We would therefore request the committee to reject the application with the further recommendation that any application for access to the development site be made only as part of a full planning application which should cover all aspects of the proposed development, be made in full consultation with WCRA and utilise a mutually acceptable Transport Consultant.

Article from Louise Osbourne can be viewed here: See article