Surrey County Councillor David Lewis was interviewed on BBC Radio Surrey this morning about The Paddocks development. We have included a few key excepts below, as well as the full interview for those that are interested.

1 Village history & impact

“ We go back to the Doomsday book. We have the oldest church in Surrey – St. Mary’s Church – in Stoke D’Abernon. And if this development were to go ahead it would represent something like almost a 40% increase in the number of houses in Stoke D’Abernon, and a corresponding increase in the population of Stoke D’Abernon.”

2 The environment

In response to a comment from Mic Mac, the strategic land developer:

 ”And in terms of the environment, I fail to understand how you can argue that a site, which is a green belt site, has horses grazing on us at the moment. How can you develop a site like that – put 250 dwellings on the site – and say that actually we are improving the environment.”

3 The cumulative effect

 ”I think that we also have to look at the cumulative effect. If you look at this part of Surrey, Cobham, which is just down the road, is going to be very impacted by the Wisley Airfield development – that’s 2000 houses. We’ve got a proposal in for another 250 house development in Oxshott. We’ve got this one in Blundel Lane Stoke D’Abernon, which is 250 houses, and it’s strongly rumoured that there’s going to be an application shortly behind the Fairmile Hotel on Chippings Farm in Cobham for 350 houses.”

Full interview

You can find the full interview below (click the ‘play’ icon in the bottom left-hand corner below).