Tag Archives: AONB

CALL TO ACTION: AONB land at Red Court under threat

Text of my letter published in The Haslemere Herald this week:

If your readers love Haslemere’s beautiful countryside, now is the time to speak up against its destruction!

AONB land at Red Court

Like so many, I moved with my young family to Haslemere nearly 20 years ago, attracted by its unique setting in the beautiful Surrey Hills countryside.  We share in the wonder of former resident Robert Hunter, who co-founded the National Trust here in 1895, with a mission to protect this special landscape for future generations. 

For the last forty years, the Surrey Hills Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty has shared Hunter’s vision; its AONB in Haslemere is a legally designated exceptional landscape whose distinctive character and natural beauty are precious enough to be safeguarded in the national interest against large scale development.

It is absolutely shocking that the AONB land at the Red Court estate between Scotland Lane and the Midhurst Road is now under threat of destruction by a property developer who wants to build over 110 new homes, claiming this major building project is in the ‘public interest’ (and so should be permitted despite AONB status).  It would irreversibly damage the character of what should be protected landscape.  As part of the proposal, much of the avenue of mature trees on the Midhurst Road approach to Haslemere will be felled to create a new junction and access to the housing estate, forever changing the character of southern Haslemere.  

Your readers will be excused for being unaware how imminent the threat is.  The developer has appealed against Waverley’s rejection of “outline” planning permission that was submitted alongside actual planning permission for an initial two buildings and new access road (also rejected).  Even though no plans or details for the “outline” plan for 111 dwellings were available or open to proper public scrutiny at the first stage, if the developer is successful on appeal to the Planning Inspector and “outline” planning permission is granted, it means that the destruction of AONB is guaranteed, and the principle of development there granted.

If residents of Haslemere and its surrounding villages do not want to see the character of our protected landscape and biodiverse countryside destroyed, then they should make their views known as a matter of urgency – the window for sending comments to the Planning Inspector closes next Friday, 13th October at https://acp.planninginspectorate.gov.uk case reference number 3327643. More information at Haslemere South Residents Association www.haslemeresouth.com

Preservation of our countryside is in the public interest – and therefore all the more critical that the public’s voice be heard loud and clear by the Planning Inspector!


Nikki Barton , Former Independent Surrey County Councillor for Haslemere and Grayswood, Independent Town Councillor, Haslemere South 

Letter from Chair, Haslemere South Residents’ Association to its members

Dear HSRA Members

I wrote to you before the Town Council met to consider what action to take over trumped up charges against two Haslemere South Ward councillors, Nikki Barton and Kirsten Ellis.  I am totally shocked and extremely angry at the outcome of the council’s so-called process.  The decision to bar Nikki Barton from any meetings of the Planning Committee and any meetings related to the Neighbourhood Plan is outrageous and was orchestrated by a collection of Conservative councillors who have spent the last three years supporting the development of large housing estates on protected countryside at Red Court and Longdene. 

What is worse, is that the Mayor and a group of councillors seem to have succumbed to the bullying pressure by the developer and, in turn, decided to bully our local councillors, seeking to apply the most disproportionate sanctions on them.  The so-called breaches seemed inadvertent given the unclear rules to do with registration of memberships of organisations like HSRA and the National Trust that are not political parties but include in their activities the desire to help protect the countryside – how many other councillors have fallen short of these technical requirements?  At least one of the councillors: our own ward’s Simon Dear who called for the ban, but had himself failed to register his own financial interests for several years, a much worse breach to be honest.

You may have seen in the Haslemere Herald’s letter page over the past couple of weeks (copies of letters attached) the outrage of several members of the public at the way the council has conducted itself on this.  I asked Councillor Barton for her view of the situation and this is what she said:

“First of all, let me say that if I failed to register my membership of HSRA and the National Trust, it was totally inadvertent.  To be honest, the rules were not clear and the meeting where the issue arose was not a planning meeting about Red Court, but a meeting on the whole town’s Neighbourhood Plan where nobody declared any interests. However, what is incredible is how my independent approach to standing up for the community has been a red rag to a bull.  Neither the property developer nor an influential group of Conservative councillors could help themselves coming after me in what might even have been a coordinated two-pronged attack so that their plans to build houses (or to allow them to be built) on protected countryside at Red Court and at Longdene could happen.
Just to be clear, the developer has successfully got Waverley, as the planning authority, to spend thousands on a three year investigation culminating in removing me from the meeting to consider their plans to build 200 houses on ALGV and AONB – does that sound the right outcome for being a member of HSRA at the time, something I never hid?!
I have always maintained my independence.  So of course in 2018 I rejected the developer’s cynical attempts (including an offer of land) to try and persuade me as a councillor to promote his housing estate plans.  I have no idea what he did to persuade two Conservative councillors to move the Settlement Boundary before he bought the land at Red Court; nor what he did to persuade our own Haslemere South councillor Simon Dear to repeatedly back his plans, ignoring over 530 public objections (most from Haslemere residents); nor what he did to persuade 2 other Haslemere residents to join him in harassing me and complaining against me when I voted for a Neighbourhood Plan that kept the Settlement Boundary where it was; nor what he did to persuade two councillors and the Mayor to convene an Extraordinary Council Meeting in order to ban me from Planning Committee meetings the day before the Planning Committee was due to review plans to increase the Red Court scheme to nearly 200 houses.
Whatever the outcome of the pending judicial review of the decision to ban me from the Planning Committee (which was taken with total disregard for the council’s own procedures), I am keen that my local constituents understand obvious concerns surrounding the developer who is currently applying to extend his plans for up to 200 houses on protected countryside from Red Court to the Midhurst Road.  This is a developer who apparently will stop at nothing in order to push through his plans.  Since the beginning of the vexatious complaint brought against me, which was made by the developer’s lawyers, he has been trying everything he can.  His property agents tried to use the complaint as an argument for their planning appeal last year.  His lawyers even wrote threatening legal letters to the council before the Extraordinary Council Meeting and the next day’s Planning Committee… all designed purely and simply to exclude me and Councillor Ellis from being in the room when his planning application was due to be considered.  That the council has countenanced this type of intervention in the proper functioning of the democratic bodies set up to represent you the constituents, is gravely worrying.”

If you are as outraged by this as I am, then I strongly urge you to write to object to the expansion plans of the developer, Redwood (South West) Ltd, to build another ~150 houses on top of the 50 already approved at Red court.  Go to Waverley WA/2022/01887.  Your objections need to be submitted by October 30th.
Best wishes
Howard Brown
HSRA Chair.

Herald Letters 1. Farzana Aslam 2. Peter Aucamp 3. Nigel Pyke