Page 203 - All files for Planning Inspectorate update

Ashbourne Park Owners’ Association

3 Ashbourne House. Lewes Road. Ashurst Wood. RH19 3TB

8 August 2019

Dear Mr King,

Re DM/19/1025

I write on behalf of the Ashbourne Park Owners’ Association regarding the above and in particular
your notice dated 2 August 2019 regarding what purports to be a new planning application but
which appears to be, in fact, a relatively minor revision of the one submitted in March 2019 under
the same reference number.

Our objections to this application remain unchanged from that submitted earlier and also to its
predecessor application DM/18/1548 CHECK. The grounds on which you, yourself, rejected
DM/18/1548 still seem to us still to pertain to this new application, so we find it difficult to see how
this application could itself be approved. For the sake of clarity at this stage of the application our
objections are as follows:-

1. In spite of your assurances to the contrary the developer has yet again failed to put their
proposals out for consultation with local residents – another example of their cynical
approach and the failure of the council to hold them to due process

2. There has still been no housing needs survey to determine the actual requirement for a
development of this scale. The Neighbourhood Plan envisaged a need for a minimum of 62
dwellings over fifteen years across the whole village. This development will, if approved,
deliver 54 of those in one fell swoop in one location.

3. We believe that it is salutary that the Planning Committee of the Ashurst Wood Village
Council - the very Council who devised the Neighbourhood Plan that this proposal is meant
to satisfy – comprehensively rejected it in its letter to you of 24 April 2019. There can be no
logic in imposing on Ashurst Wood from above a major development that they think
completely inappropriate to the area and for which they have no desire.

4. It is highly questionable whether there is even a market demand for a further 54 new
dwellings anywhere in the vicinity of East Grinstead as a whole, let alone in Ashurst Wood.

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