The Staines Town Society definitely don’t like either the proposed concentration of development in Staines, or high-rise blocks, but we are in support of the Local Plan because it’s the lesser of two evils; there’d be more towers built on more unsuitable sites, without a valid Plan to restrain them. Additionally, without the protection afforded by an up to date Local Plan, there’s a high possibility of the loss of more green belt land in the future, across the Borough.
Regrettably, the developers have certainly got their eyes on Staines and with Spelthorne now only having an out-of-date Local Plan, whether we like it or not, the Council have no powers to refuse applications, e.g. the towers rising on the Masonic site (refused by Spelthorne Planning Committee but allowed on appeal by the Planning Inspectorate) and those ugly towers planned for the Debenhams site (refused so far but they or another developer will no doubt try again).
Why is 60% of new housing development in Staines?
Well, the process began 5 years ago when a call was made for sites from local land & building owners. Spelthorne planning office were being tasked by the government with building more housing but there were no more available brown-field sites or vacant land being offered up for development. The Planning authority can only consider applications for sites that have been submitted to them. Unfortunately more sites were submitted from Staines.
We may all regret that more sites across the rest of the Borough were not offered by land/building owners but actually neither the council nor any of us ordinary residents have any control over which sites are submitted.
The Government is in the process of making significant changes to Planning Law, which is being driven by housing provision (or lack of it). Recently, in the belief that it would solve the problem of further development of high rise tower blocks, Tandridge Council (on the other side of Surrey) also took similar action to some of the Spelthorne councillors, in an attempt to delay (or stop) their local plan to the point where it became outside the time frame for completion of the Government’s examination process. Unfortunately the result is that the Inspector has rejected Tandridge’s plan as unsound, so Tandridge now has no valid plan and is in danger of losing its powers as a planning authority. All planning decisions in Tandridge would be made centrally, by a government hell bent on increasing housing provision.
By no stretch of the imagination are we in favour of the over-development of Staines (or Spelthorne in general) especially with tower blocks, perhaps though, we should be thankful that the height of tower blocks here, due to our close proximity to Heathrow, are at least capped at 15 storeys (unlike Woking).
As much as we’d like to bury our heads in the sand & hope that having no local plan means no more tower blocks, for the reasons above, the STAINES TOWN SOCIETY SUPPORTS THE LOCAL PLAN, AS THE LEAST DAMAGING OF THE ONLY TWO REAL OPTIONS.
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