For this week’s edition of ‘Nimby Watch’, we’re off to Surrey, where Nimbys would rather maintain a station car park than build over 200 new homes…
Where? Redhill, Surrey: one of those places you’ve probably passed through on your way to Gatwick or Brighton, but to which you’ve rarely given a second thought. I’d always, if I’m honest, imagined it as a sort of suburb of Reigate, which only had any independent identity because it’s the bit with the mainline station – a sort of equivalent of Shenfield or Surbiton. But no, while the town does seem to exist largely because of a convenient gap in the hills that placed it on the main routes south, it is apparently a town in its own right.
Thanks for the gazetteer. Who’s trying to build what? Oh right, yes. Solum Regeneration, a public-private partnership between Network Rail and Kier Group –
Highly suspicious name. – no it’s not, check the spelling, are trying to turn the station car park into two apartment blocks – one 10-15 storeys, the other 7-14 – which between them would contain a rather more precise 255 homes. (I think we can assume the plans are still being finalised.) It’d also pour £6 million into a new station building and retail space. All this would help meet local need on a brownfield site with six trains an hour to central London, while also generating cash for a bit of the state that needs it. It’s good.
It’s also not a million miles off several earlier editions of this column, so why are you writing about it? Oh, because of one of the most perfect headlines I’ve ever seen on a Nimby story.
This better be good. Are you ready? Here we go:
Fears Redhill will be ‘another Woking’ if controversial train station development goes ahead.
Another Woking? Have they confused reality with the War of the Worlds? According to the East Redhill Residents’ Association – which aims to make people proud to call Redhill home (by making sure there aren’t many of them), apparently – Woking is famed across Surrey for its tower blocks. ERRA – this is its real acronym – is concerned that allowing this scheme through will ‘greenlight’ developers to build as tall as they can. This will, according to the news story from the Local Democracy Reporting Service’s Emily Dalton, create ‘a snowball effect in the area as apartment blocks get higher and higher’.
Is that actually how it works? No of course it’s not how it bloody works. They’re tower blocks, not Japanese knotweed, it’s not like you let one in and then the council and community are powerless to block the next. If that were true, this entire island would look like Manhattan and there would be some downsides to that but we probably wouldn’t have a bloody housing crisis, would we?
Alright mate, calm down. Okay, okay. There is some good news: ERRA claim they’re not Nimbys.
Isn’t that what Nimbys always say, that they’re happy with development, just not here? It is, but to be fair, these guys do claim to understand the site should be developed – which is, compared to those defending car parks elsewhere, pretty Yimby of them. They just don’t like towers, and think they contain too many one-bed flats. Apparently ‘the perceived under supply of family houses in the area will mean people only live in Redhill for a short time, making the town centre more transient’.
They want to replace a station car park with family homes? How many of them? Four? For their part, the developers are pointing out that building here, on a brownfield site next to a station, will mean fewer car-miles and protect green belt sites. But Jan from ERRA maintains that the scheme is shortsighted, because Reigate and Banstead Council ‘do not have a vision for Redhill in the next 50 years’.
That sounds like an excellent case for an updated local plan, to explain how the area might meet its housing need. Perhaps ERRA might wish to get involved.
Click here to subscribe to our daily briefing – the best pieces from CapX and across the web.
CapX depends on the generosity of its readers. If you value what we do, please consider making a donation.
