Jane, Gemma and Nina met up with Dr Ben Spencer - the Runnymede MP and our Surrey County Councillor Jonathan Hulley on the 29th September. The meeting was both informative and useful in our objective of reducing the impact of the Ottershaw East development on our village.
Both Ben and Jonathan were sympathetic to our concerns. Although Ben is not directly involved in any planning decisions (which are entirely a decision for our Runnymede Councillors who sit on the planning committee), he agreed that residents should have more impact on local planning decisions. He asked us to provide him with evidence of where Richborough Estates, the land promotor ignored concerns of residents during their initial consultation and he will address these with them. He has a keen interest in affordable housing which is high quality and for us that means that we should press for all housing to have a good amount of green space. Therefore, we will press for quality design such as the need for placemaking, things that promote wellbeing such as public open green space, dedicated cycling routes and wildlife corridors, as well as insisting on locked outdoor storage space for all dwellings for prams, cycles and other household miscellany.
Going forward, we were advised by Cllr Johnathan Hulley that we should take steps to increase profile of the planning application on the Ottershaw East site and highlight the issues with those councillors who will be sitting on the planning committee when the application comes up for a decision.
For this reason, we will be launching a petition and a further residents survey very soon. It is estimated that the application will come before the planning committee around the New Year and we wish to make sure that the concerns of our residents regarding this development are made very clear to the councillors who will be deciding the fate of Ottershaw Village.
Don’t forget to look out for BRAG facebook posts for more information.
Together we can do this!
BRAG Team
Jane, Gemma, Nina Lindsay
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