A National Planning Inspectorate inquiry has approved a development at my home on Whyteleafe Road, an approval long withheld by Tandridge Planning Committee. 

As one of the very few people who actually attended the whole seven day inquiry I think it is a shame more Tandridge residents did not. Anyone who did would have had no doubts as to why the inspector made the logical decision he did, contrary to the various opinions but very different motives of Tandridge Council (TDC), its Planning Committee of local Tory and Lib-Dem councillors, our local Tory MP, various Residents Associations scattered throughout Tandridge with no apparent direct relevance to the development in question, and local objectors. It is also a shame that the full report is yet to emerge, but when it does perhaps I won’t be the only person asking myself questions such as the following:

•  How does a council like Tandridge and its obviously expert planning department allow itself to be so obstructed in its workings by the apparently anti-development stance of its clearly fractious Planning Committee? So that commissioned reports prepared by outside experts using Government approved data, and also approved by the planning department to enable it to upgrade its strategy, can be rejected by the Planning Committee which seemingly preferred to accept self serving and contradictory data and opinion from obviously inexpert and apparently affiliated residents associations.

•  Are we all happy that TDC is happy with its long obsolete housing plan which at one stage projected meeting less than 10% of housing need between now and 2026, and the impact that will have on young households, spiraling house prices (no doubt enjoyed by many in residents associations) and which sustains the openly anti-business and anti-progressive stance expressed during the inquiry by objectors in what should be an economic boom area?

•  Why is a development of 13 properties, the largest of which is a single 3-bedroom detached, and suitable for people starting on the housing ladder, so provocative to local councillors when other larger schemes from other national developers can apparently pass unchallenged? Could it be due to the applicant being Village Developments, a small local company with a long standing record of challenging TDC’s planning policy? Or as I heard from one councillor supporting rejection in a Planning Committee session in 2013 due to the fact that the development contains ‘maisonettes’ which apparently should not be built in any ‘nice’ residential area? Or that the approved Whyteleafe Road scheme, incorporating as it does a small chunk of an area of land already long designated by TDC as ‘reserved’ housing land and which could only be accessed from Whyteleafe Road in any case, highlighted a possible desire by  local councillors to block development of even designated land in certain vote sensitive areas?  

•  Why have local objectors been so apparently misled by their local councillors who know full well that the approved development was exhaustively redesigned to meet local written objections and which were closely analyzed by Village Developments?

•  Why does Village Developments get the blame for supposed shortage of local services in Caterham when isn’t it the job of councillors and the Parish Councils to champion that such services are upgraded? Why isn’t increased local council tax collection in Caterham being used to enable those services in Caterham first instead of being allocated to local pet projects or to Oxted which has a long record of no new development?

·         Why do we have 94% green belt in Tandridge (more than any other UK district council as we were repeatedly told proudly by local councillors), and other new ‘areas of special housing consideration’ apparently and interestingly sparked by this inquiry in desirable areas like Woldingham and Harestone Valley Road, while the Planning Committee also fiercely opposes certain developments in the other 6% which inevitably takes the brunt? Are we also therefore surprised that other potential ‘brown’ development sites like Rose and Young have remained as they have, neglected, for almost 2 decades?

•  Why is our local Tory MP, who did not attend the inquiry once, so opposed to this and other appropriate housing developments, especially in his beloved Oxted it seems, to the point that he apparently wrote to the Inspectorate after the inquiry to presumably try to influence the final decision? Why do his views, and in fact those of local Tory and Lib-Deb councillors, so strongly conflict with those still held within the Coalition government, that well developed site proposals should be encouraged at least for now to try to catch up on an acute housing shortage? Who is he trying to please here and why? Certainly not young voters trying to obtain property in what was recently classed as the 5^th most unaffordable housing area in the UK.

With all these questions in mind I really wonder who is the bully here? A local developer working to meet Central Government and local social need? Or local politicians who have seemingly contrived over many years to oppose development as a political tactic to retain their rapidly shrinking NIMBY electorate and who do not like it when someone points out a few home truths?

Mark Lewis, Whyteleafe Road, Caterham-on-the-Hill.