Horley Master Plan
April 20th, 2007 at 04:10pm
Under Horley Master Plan
A letter to home owners in the Crossoak Lane surrounding area
Dear Neighbours
As you know we have recently suffered the complete destruction of the trees and hedgerows in Cross Oak Lane, after being told by representatives on the Borough Council that they were going to carry out ‘pruning and hedge trimming’. This is yet another example of how our local elected councillors ride roughshod over our desires and sensibilities.
In addition, we have been denied the opportunity to find out exactly what is happening to Lake Lane and the construction of the new road. Both of these instances demonstrate quite clearly the contempt with which our councillors hold us, their electorate.
Having discussed the issues with many local people and the other members of the Cross Oak Conservation Society, we have come to realise that the only way that we can possibility find out what is going on in our area and gain benefits for the community is to have an Independent member on Reigate and Banstead Borough Council, working for the community and not tied to central government or opposition party politics.
As a founding member of the Cross Oak Conservation Society, I feel strongly about local democracy and the way that it should work to benefit the community. For this reason I have agreed at the request of the other members to stand as an independent councillor in the forthcoming elections. I am therefore writing to you to ask for your help and assistance in achieving this goal and giving us a voice and a source of information in our local government.
I attach a copy of my election leaflet which we will be distributing throughout the Salfords and Sidlow Ward this Saturday 21st April. If you would like to help, we would welcome you at 9.00am at Cross Oak House, Cross Oak Lane. Please let me know by email if you can help. If you can’t make it, I am holding a Public meeting at Salfords Village Hall on Wednesday 25th April between 6 and 8 pm to give local people the opportunity of meeting me and expressing their local concerns.
It would also be extremely helpful if you could forward this email and my leaflet to any friends, relatives or contacts that you may have in the Salfords and Sidlow ward, urging them to vote for me (if you agree with my thoughts) so that we can truly have a local voice for local people.
Thank you in advance for your assistance and I hope that I will be able to represent your needs locally after May 3rd.
Download Jane Eyles Election PDF
Jane Eyles
01293 783 065
07885 083 005
jane.eyles@cross-oak.co.uk
Check out our locations:
www.thepoachertudeley.co.uk
www.theostrichcolnbrook.co.uk
www.thekingsarmsockley.co.uk
www.theinnonthepondnutfield.co.uk
By Jez
February 24th, 2006 at 05:50pm
Under Horley Master Plan+ The South East Plan+ Buy A House in Horley
Water Shortage in South East
Sounds like it’s going to be a nice summer, queuing up at the local standpipe with my bucket. It’s looking likely that we in the south east will be facing our worst ever water shortage - in a long run of water shortages.
I hate to harp on about it, but how can anyone plan to build thousands upon thousands of new houses in the southeast when there is not enough water to go around for the existing houses?
Why can’t some of the land be put aside for some new reservoirs? It’s getting beyond the pail (geddit?)
Who in their right mind would want to move into a house in an area that has constant water shortages and a hosepipe ban every summer? Considering we aren’t even close to summer yet?
You also have to question the folly of building on known flood plains after the driest winter sways someone’s decision. 
By Jez
July 30th, 2005 at 02:48pm
Under Horley Master Plan+ The South East Plan
Local people (especially my friends) are really starting to moan about the Fastway Bus Route (now something like £5,000,000 over budget, I hear though I will check to make sure that’s correct ). Now that some of the new bus stops are starting to go in on the roads, we are noticing that they are not indented as all good bus stops should be - no, they are out dented. Further crippling the flow of traffic. Because buses struggle to pull out into traffic. THIS IS HORLEY NOT PARIS!! There just isn’t that much traffic in our ghost town! At least not until they put in out dented bus stops and the traffic gets grid locked every time the bus stops to pick up the SINGLE passenger that wants to use it for that week.
The fastway bus is going to be a massive white elephant. I just cannot see people being winkled out of their cars to get on a bus that doesn’t cover most of the surrounding area. Most people will have to drive to their nearest bust stop.
And this in the name of global warming?? We are made to feel guilty about using our cars when air travel is on the increase, every airport in the country wants to expand and allow more flights and pollute god only knows how many more times than cars do.
This is not the answer in my eyes.
By Jez
July 4th, 2005 at 02:43pm
Under Horley Master Plan+ The South East Plan
…Or Gatwick Airport’s staff bus???
Call me bitter but this seems an awful lot of money and disruption for Gatwick to shuttle their staff about! I expect that no one has noticed that a lot of Gatwick workers work shifts? Will there be a Fastway Bus available to take someone home at 4 am?
No.
I love Wikipedia. Just found this on Fastway if you are unfamiliar with what it’s all about.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crawley_Fastway
By Jez
July 2nd, 2005 at 12:29pm
Under Horley Master Plan+ The South East Plan
It will be interesting to see if the Fastway bus route has any impact on traffic, good or bad - it’s certainly bad at the moment with all the disruption of building it.
Locally to me, the Fastway model is causing bad feelings as everyone that I have spoken to is sceptical about whether people will actually use it or not. I doubt it will make one iota of difference. In Horley, the bus is always empty - I can’t see it suddenly getting full!
If people DO start to use the bus more - are the Government going to impose a bus congestion charge as they are talking about with trains? I haven’t heard anything so ridiculous in ages! It shows how out of touch the powers that be are. They must think that we don’t notice the irony of this latest proposed congestion charge.
By Jez
May 17th, 2005 at 09:20am
Under Horley Master Plan+ The South East Plan
There is no doubt that many of the climate change scenarios are extremely challenging to our flood defence role. Southern Region is dominated by its coastline. Climate change will make it extremely difficult to maintain standards of defence against both flooding and erosion.
-Gary Lane, Regional Water Manager, Environment Agency, Southern Region.
The South East avoided the famous Easter Floods in 1998 but this is no reason for complacency. Climate change will mean more winter rainfall, wetter soils in winter and a greater risk of extreme flooding.
(no source)
Doing nothing is not an option. You may doubt some of the predictions and their likely impacts, but I suggest that a sensible analysis of the risks does not allow us to sit back and wait.
Peter Ewins, Chief Executive, The Met. Office. From a lecture given to The Royal Academy of Engineering, January 1999.
I wonder how much worse it would be if a large percentage of land were concreted over in the South East Plan?
Jez.
By Jez
April 26th, 2005 at 02:58pm
Under Horley Master Plan
A friend was telling me about the deal that the Fastway people made with the County Council people in which money was lent to the Fastway people to keep Fastway on track in the Horley area - BEFORE the Masterplan was ever agreed upon. It just shows you how democracy truly works. Decisions like the Horley Master Plan are made without the general public having any say at all. Any notion that we do have a say is just a facade.
Anyway, I have drifted from the point I was going to make.
On searching Google for information about the said underhandedness above, I note that all the results in the top 10 on Google.co.uk search for “fastway horley money” (without the quotes) throw up eight results in .PDF format (Portable Document Format) and the last one being this site (written in honest to goodness html and plain text). I have noticed government sites doing this more and more. I can only assume that it’s because it’s more difficult for the often controversial information enclosed in the PDF file is more difficult to propagate around the web and less people are likely to view it (and complain about it).
However, google also caches the page as some weird form of HTML - I have no idea how it works and the sentences are only selectable as single lines (this may impair search ability also). If anyone knows how this works, please tell me.
Anyway, I finally found it - here are some excerpts:-
The cost of extending Fastway from West Sussex into Surrey was originally to be funded by contributions from developers as part of the Horley Master Plan but with proposed developments delayed the County Council will guarantee approximately £1 million to keep the project on schedule. The council will recoup the money later when the Horley Master Plan gets underway.
11th December 2003 the document is dated. It’s no wonder that the Horley Master Plan was pushed through in the face of fierce opposition the way that it was.
The document goes on to say:-
“It means that the people of Horley can look forward to a state-of-the-art transport service that is frequent, efficient and reliable and one that offers a real alternative to the private car. With around a third of Gatwick’s employees living in the Crawley/Horley area Fastway will be a very welcome amenity for the Horley area.”
I for one will be very interested to know whether the Fastway bus will run 24/7 to reflect the shift patterns of the third of Gatwick’s employees living in the area? Or is it just another waste of money that no one will use or is unsuitable for their work patterns?
By Jez
March 31st, 2005 at 02:55pm
Under General+ Horley Master Plan+ The South East Plan
“Development on or close to flood plains will be vulnerable to flooding, and may increase the risk of flooding elsewhere”. Couple that Environment Agency quote (see Spring 2005 East Surrey Westminster Report) with the same Agency’s flood prediction maps for the north of Horley and what do you get?
By Derek
March 30th, 2005 at 02:29pm
Under Horley Master Plan+ The South East Plan
With the plans unveiled for the Gatwick Master Plan it makes me wonder how much , if any, green areas there are going to be in this area. The new Gatwick Airport proposals are going to completely destroy the once lovely village of Charlwood after years of merely abusing it.
Coming only days after councillors voted to continue with the Horley Master Plan comes the next blow - hand in hand some might say. One proposing housing - one needing housing. Coincidence?
These mighty blows to our already crowded infrastructure only add insult to the massive injury that will be the South East Plan with it’s proposed 25,000 to 33,000 homes per annum built in the South East.
Say goodbye to our lovely Green Belt areas. What was the point of those again?
By Jez
March 24th, 2005 at 10:42am
Under Horley Master Plan+ The South East Plan
Last night the council granted outline planning permission for the Horley Master Plan development.
This was even after Andrew Kent revealed that he had found that in 1970 Surrey County Council mapped the flood area and that it covered a large part of the development site.
I haven’t had access to the new documents but will post here as soon as I can.
I hope that there will be some serious recource on this preposterous matter.
By Jez
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