Ingrid Tarrant has joined residents campaigning against a 2,000-home new town near Ockham (Image: Adam Gerrard / Daily Express)
The celebrity ex-wife of Chris Tarrant has joined residents campaigning against a 2,000-home new town near the picturesque Surrey village of Ockham.
Villagers say Wisley new town will destroy their rural idyll listed in the Domesday book and dotted with historic buildings including a 12th-century church.
They say Taylor Woodrow’s project – which includes two schools and a medical centre – will quadruple the local population from nearly 900 to almost 3,500.
Ockham’s narrow country roads will be jammed with an estimated 5,000 cars and the water table, drainage and sewerage system will be thrown into chaos.
Wildlife habitats including badger setts and the homes of rare ground-nesting birds like the nightjar and dartford warbler will also be threatened.
Ingrid, 68, spoke out just days after the Daily Express highlighted the countryside threat from a rush for new homes to end the housing crisis.
Villagers say Wisley new town will destroy their rural idyll (Image: Adam Gerrard / Daily Express)
Campaigners nickname the schemes cowpat developments because they are dumped indiscriminately in green and rustic areas.
She said: “It will be a blot on the landscape but this isn’t ‘nimbyism’.
“Every way you look at the argument it will resonate – the environment, nature, wildlife, the eco-system.
“We love it here. Everyone wants to get away from the maddening crowd of London and this is where you find it here.
“We love it here but we’re losing all these open spaces which are the lungs of London and once it’s gone, it’s gone forever.”
The mother-of-four, who has starred in BBC fashion show What Not to Wear and the Verdict and Sky One’s The Race, added: “It’s its not practical or proportionate.
“You are talking about 3,460 people invading an area that has got a small settlement of less than 900. It’s just disproportionate.
“A lot of these people will be urban-minded people that don’t understand or respect the countryside.
“Crime will go up without question in one of the safest places in the country. A lot of things are being massaged to make this happen.”
Her friend and fellow villager Helen Jefferies, 62, “The main objection is that this area is not sustainable.
“It’s true that visual is a problem but it’s mainly about its impact on an infrastructure that doesn’t really exist.
“It’s as far as possible from the railway station, so you have to rely on the car.
“That means you will have 5000 cars on roads which are narrow, unlit and prone to flooding. It just won’t work.
“It’s a 15-year build, so that’ll be 15 years of HGVs on country roads. The danger is it will become a ghetto in the middle of the countryside. “
The 62-year-old former broker continued: “We all love it here. I’ve been here for 30 years and we like the fact that we can go walking.”
Another campaigner, Frances Porter, 61, went on: “We all like having nature in our backyard but this is going to become a cowpat ghetto.
“There are footpaths and bridleways which people use all the time. It’s such a part of the community really. People love walking up there.”
TV sports presenter Helen Chamberlain, 55, is another local resident who is said to be opposed to the development.
The village just near Guildford dates back to the Bronze age and boasts historical buildings including Grade I-listed All Saints Church and 19th Century Ockham Mill.
It was the birthplace of medieval philosopher William of Ockham and home to William and Ellen Craft, a famous couple who fled slavery in 19th Century USA to England.
But housing giant Taylor Wimpey have submitted plans to build nearly 1,800 homes, while two smaller developers are expected to tender plans for a further 200.
The building site was formerly Wisley airfield, a runway and landing strip laid down during the Second World War and used to test VC10 aircraft afterwards.
As well as houses, schools and a medical centre, there will be space for eight traveller pitches and more than 5,000 square metres of business premise.
The developers claim the “sustainable settlement” is needed to help solve the housing crisis and will include a percentage of “affordable” homes.
They also say they will provide greenspace around the development, together with a drainage plan and a well-designed traffic management system.
But Ingrid said: “This plan was originally turned down by the Environment Secretary and the emergency services said their vehicles could not gt though the concentration of cars.
“The fact that it has been objected to at the highest level – forget us villagers – is important.“It’s impractical. We know this better than anybody else because we live here and we know how it works and how functions.”
Helen added: “When it was included in the local plan there were 60,000 objections. It is unheard of.
“We have got Kings’ Council and they say this site has every planning problem you can imagine.
“So if this site gets approved then every greenfield in the country is at risk. We should be absolutely safe.”
Guildford Council said: “The application is still being considered by the Council, where a number of consultation responses are still awaited.”
A spokesperson for the developers said they were supporting the council by “delivering much-needed housing as part of a new sustainable community that will secure a lasting legacy for generations to come.
“It will turn around 70 acres of concrete runway and hardstanding into a vibrant community with increased biodiversity, schools, sports facilities, parks and open spaces, play areas, new wildlife habitats and a range of new sustainable transport options.
“Our objective has always been to work with the local community, stakeholders and authorities and our plans have been carefully designed over a two-year period incorporating a wide range of inputs. We welcome further opportunities to engage and receive feedback on our proposals.
“This will be one of our most environmentally friendly sites to-date and will bring significant positive benefits to residents and the wider community including permanent job creation and a forecasted over £100 million contribution to the economy.”
COMMENT BY LUCY FRAZER MP
Everyone agrees this country needs more homes – homes to rent, to buy, to part-buy. We need to get more people on to the housing ladder.
The issue, of course, is we don’t always agree on where to build those homes.
But there’s a ready-made solution to this problem: brownfield sites.
For the most part, brownfield sites are land which has already been developed and usually hooked up to electricity and mains drainage.
These sites are ripe for regeneration and deserve to be prioritised.
They’re often old factories, boarded up shopping centres and car parks. Think the old MG/Rover factory at Longbridge. It stood derelict for years before Government cash helped transform the site into hundreds of new, high-quality homes sitting side by side shops, restaurants, gyms and local businesses offering a whole host of career opportunities.
We need more of that which is why, today, we’re making it much easier for councils to sweep away ugly, unused industrial buildings and build new, beautifully designed, high-quality homes in their place.
£60m of brownfield funding is up for grabs and we’re asking councils who have sites in mind to go ahead and get their bids in straightaway.
This investment will have a massive effect on local housebuilding, especially for councils who need the cash to clear the land and get it ready for builders to come on site and get spades in the ground.
The money we’re announcing today is just one small part of our £180m Brownfield Land Release Fund 2 that will free up land for up to 17,600 new homes on brownfield sites while creating 56,000 new jobs for bricklayers, carpenters and apprentices.
Our brownfield first approach will not just protect cherished greenbelt land, it will breathe new life into run-down sites, spur regeneration and level up towns and cities right across the country.
- Lucy Frazer is Housing and Planning Minister.
