I can only begin by apologising for the number of documents associated with this submission. I have tried wherever possible to include extracts from the vast array of documents available to view on the Future Mole Valley website and included these as appendices to make navigation a little easier and more focussed.
For the purposes of the Green Belt Review carried out by MVDC both the Milton Court Lane site and the land to the south of the Westcott Road on Sondes Place Farm have been treated as one entity and labelled DI for the purposes of the review. The other three areas to the west and north east of St. Martin’s school have been labelled as DL by MVDC.
With regard to the area labelled DI:
See Appendix 1a + 1b.
The green belt review carried out by MVDC classifies the area labelled DI (both the Milton Court Lane site and the land to the south of the A25 on Sondes Place Farm) as making a ‘moderate’ contribution to the green belt. This is a very subjective assessment and seems to be heavily biased towards encouraging a negative view of the areas in question and downplaying the contribution they make to the green belt.
See Appendix 2.
Using a very convenient tool called the ‘Exceptional Circumstances Analysis’ both areas contained within the DI boundary are being justified for re-classification in order for them to be downgraded from the original assessment of having a moderate contribution to the green belt to having a minimal contribution to the green belt in two areas of assessment leaving them open to this re-classification.
See Appendix 3a + 3b.
Both parcels of land labelled DI are now the subject of re-classification and the very subjective justification for their downgrading is contained in the following Appendices.
See Appendix 4a +4b.
Given this evidence it is quite clear that MVDC have used any means at their disposal to re-classify these areas of green belt land in order to add them to the stock of land they have at their disposal for development purposes.
Not only is this an appalling use of power on behalf of MVDC, by manipulating the assessment criteria in favour of their own ends but is, in this time of climate emergency , utter madness. Far from taking land out of the green belt for development purposes MVDC should be looking for ways to increase the amount of green space available to the residents of Mole Valley to ensure we all (including our children and grandchildren) have a habitable planet to live on in the future.
No matter what strictures are cited in the hundreds of pages of documents drawn up by MVDC to justify this horrendous act of vandalism, as guidance for developers, once these areas are re-classified then the residents of Mole Valley will never experience the same sense of community and rural atmosphere ever again and it will open the floodgates for even more intense housing developments on these two sites. Once they are classified as ‘Built Up Areas’ then developers will continually submit planning applications for these two sites to maximise their profits and MVDC will be completely powerless to stop them.
It is also worth remembering that this housing need that MVDC seem so keen to satisfy is not driven by any identification of local need by the council. It is driven by an algorithm formulated by central government taking no account whatsoever of what our local area actually needs. We are more than likely to experience a saturation of the local market with very expensive empty properties left unoccupied in the Mole Valley area.
See Appendix 5.
MVDC have also created their own anomalies presumably to pave the way for future land grabs of green belt land
This item relates to the areas designated as area DL to the west and north east of St Martin’s school. Two of the areas are already built up but to re-classify them as built up areas and take them out of the green belt MVDC have created an opportunity at some future date to ‘tidy up’ the boundary using the same criteria thereby reducing even more the amount of green belt land available to MVDC residents.
See Appendix 6.