Announced yesterday, HERE, on the Planning Portal website is the Appeal Decision rejecting the appeal against the Surrey Heath Council’s refusal to allow the development of 93-94 Guildford Road, Lightwater. This location is in heart of Lightwater village opposite the war memorial and Memorial Gardens, which contains the village sign.

Importantly the Inspector recognised the:

• need for high quality development proposal in this part of the village
• unattractiveness of the village centre because of parked cars
• value of the Lightwater Village Design Statement in assessing planning applications

 

Here are a few  snippets from the Inspector’s report, which are useful for my campaign for improved car parking provision in Lightwater:

12. I appreciate that there is currently a car parking area forward of one of the existing properties on the appeal site. There is also a substantial amount of frontage hard surfacing and car parking on adjoining sites and on other sites in the village centre. However, this is an unattractive feature of the village. The recently adopted Lightwater Village Design Statement Supplementary Planning Document, to which substantial weight may be attached, seeks to reduce the influence of car parking on the street scene. The proposed development fails to have proper regard to this objective.

13. I conclude that the proposed development would be a poor design. Although acceptable in some respects, it would, in the way outlined above, fail to make use of this development opportunity to improve the character and appearance of the area.

14. … I attach greater weight to the Village Design Statement and Planning Policy Statement 3 (PPS3): Housing, both of which post date the Local Plan. The former document seeks to protect and enhance the local distinctiveness of Lightwater. PPS3 seeks, in my view, to prevent a perpetuation of poor quality development in areas such as this.

 Hopefully, this result will bring about a higher quality of design for this part of the village.