When is an amenity not an amenity? When it's lovely, open parkland, says the Bookham Residents’ Association (BRA). Ask the BRA when a non-amenity becomes an amenity, however, and the reply is, when it's paved over for car parking

July 31, 2007: Seventeen months ago the National Trust (NT) won planning permission to build a car park in the chestnut meadow at Polesden Lacey. The decision was made in the face of strong opposition from some local people who objected to the loss of the meadow.

But influential support from the Bookham Residents' Association helped overcome this opposition, giving the planners the excuse they needed to approve the development.

Then the BRA thought parking at Polesden Lacey would be free. But now that the Trust has decided to make the car park 'pay & display' the BRA is crying foul.

The trust could justify the charges because it wants visitors to arrive by bus and on foot or bicycle rather than by car. But now, it turns out, the National Trust has withdrawn the only bus service to Polesden (see below).

The mechanical diggers arrived two months ago to tear up Polesden Lacey's chestnut meadow, called the Cow Field because Polesden's former owners, the Grevilles, used it to graze cattle.

And this, not at the eleventh but the 13th or even 15th hour, is the moment the BRA has chosen to take up the cudgels against the developer on the grounds of loss of amenity.

BRA chairman Peter Seaward told the Bugle that the NT wrote to the BRA on June 14 to say it intended to charge non-NT members £2.50 per day for using the new car park. NT Members would still park free of charge and the £2.50 'could be refundable against a certain level of purchases in the tea room.' Parking would still be free in the small car park behind the North Lodge.

The National Trust tonight issued a statement to the Bugle which is published in full at the end of this page.

Trust property manager Andrea Selley also revealed that the Trust is seeking further planning permission to install pay & display meters at the site (also below).

Outrage at car park charges

What, exactly, is the BRA's objection is to the charges? After all, drivers now have to pass through the North Lodge pay point to reach the old car park. The reason is that the developer's new scheme was designed to move the car park outside the pay perimeter. The BRA had the idea that, instead of paying to park, you could park for nothing then either wander round the surrounding countryside or pay to go through the new entrance into the grounds. Now non-NT drivers will have to pay for parking just as before.

Says Seaward: 'The BRA responded and pointed out the variety of strong feelings in the village and said we objected to the introduction of car park fees as these were not included to our knowledge in the original application.'

It's a great shame that the BRA only takes note of 'strong local feelings in the village' if they're expressed by car drivers. For some of us, the Cow Field in its unspoilt state had long been a treasured local amenity. It was a place to walk, or stand and stare undisturbed at a view over the local landscape that, on a good day, extended to the distant Chiltern Hills.

The new car park will be on top of a hill whose location in the Green Belt, in an area of outstanding natural beauty (AONB) and an area of great landscape value (AGLV) breaches 13 national and local planning policies and guidelines.

Both the developer's decision to build it and the authorities' decisions to give the developer planning permission are shameful and a scandal.

BRA could have stopped the developer

Be in no doubt whatever - the BRA could have stopped this destruction in its tracks. It is true that the BRA has no statutory planning role and can only make recommendations. But, though unelected, it behaves as though it were our absent parish council and has undoubted influence with Mole Valley's planners. Its support can make the difference between a plan's success or failure.

To judge by the BRA's sudden new outrage, it believes that the Cow Field only becomes an amenity once you can park on it. Before, when only local walkers could enjoy its serenity, neither it nor the opinions of those who opposed its destruction had any value at all.

The developer took the same view. The Trust said it had carried out 'a comprehensive landscape and visual impact assessment.' That's odd. Because even though the main objection to the destruction of the chestnut meadow was its loss as a peaceful resort for local people, the Trust's proposals did not even mention this potential drawback.

Neither did a letter to the Bugle's editor from Trust chairman Sir William Proby. This claimed: "All of what is proposed has been weighed up to be sure that the advantages overwhelmingly justify any perceived disadvantages." That's a flat lie, Sir William.

If you're a driver, you count

It's not clear how the BRA justifies a new objection to parking charges which, at some level, have been in force for years. Having given the developer carte blanche to wreck the landscape, its grounds for objecting to anything the developer does with the results would seem to be limited.

The issue also presents the BRA with a familiar problem: whether it can justify its complaint as identical with the opinion of the whole village.

The members of the BRA executive are perfectly entitled, if they're stupid enough, to object to these charges as individuals. What they are not entitled to do is represent complaints about them as the view of you or anyone else in the village. Once again the BRA has acted completely outside what passes for its remit.

More important, though, is that the BRA's instinct to misrepresent us all as unamimously opposed to anything that upsets motorists is, thank heavens, more and more at odds with the spirit of the times. Locally, for example, the National Trust may be behaving like an anti-social vandal - albeit one that is acting completely within inadequate planning laws. Nationally, however, the Trust is seriously concerned about the likely impacts of global warming on its business, as reflected in a February 2006 Guardian interview with Trust director general Fiona Reynolds and in a second article last November.

Car Culture is on its way out

Trust policy on car use has been consistent for almost a decade. In 1999, for example, its evidence to the Commons Environment, Transport and Regional Affairs select committee said that out-of-town shopping centres – which Polesden Lacey looks like turning into – 'should charge for their parking and the revenues should be collected by local authorities for investment in public transport.' If Surrey County Council or Mole Valley have the interests of their hard-pressed tax payers at heart this is surely an offer they should take up without delay.

Today the Trust's website has a whole page on climate change, including a download which says: 'We need to encourage more car free visiting, to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.'

The Trust also publishes a list of NT Car free days out. Arrive at Claremont by public transport or cycle and you receive a £1 tea room voucher. Other south-east attractions include
* Bodiam Castle, East Sussex: Reduced rate when arriving by public transport or via Kent & East Sussex Steam Railway
* Knole, Kent: Park free to pedestrians
* Sheffield Park Garden, East Sussex: Joint ticket with Bluebell Railway
* Wakehurst Place, West Sussex: Reduced rate when arriving by public transport
* Winkworth Arboretum, Surrey: Reduced rate when arriving by public transport, cycle or on foot

In the Bugle's view, the arriving drivers on whose behalf this landscape has been ruined ought to pay heavily for the damage their proxies have wrought on their behalf. £2.50 seems far too low a price to pay.

Why was the National Trust given special treatment?

Meanwhile, it's worth asking exactly what MVDC was doing giving this proposal house room. Had any other developer asked to build a car park on the top of a hill in the Green Belt they'd have been shown the door.

Mole Valley has been very strict about car parking developments. Rusper Golf club had a fight on its hands even to extend an existing car park. And in December 2005, the Surrey Advertiser reported MVDC’s decision to reject a planning application by Dedman Properties to use flat, featureless land at the back of some houses not far from the Gatwick airport perimeter as parking for 150 cars.

The site, which the Bugle has visited, is a drab hardstanding which was already occupied by a vacant industrial building, had been previously developed, and might again be used for industrial purposes. Unlike Polesden’s chestnut meadow, it was not a beauty spot. Yet the site’s situation in the Green Belt was enough for the planning authority, also Mole Valley, to deem its use as a car park “inappropriate”. Planning inspector Dennis Bradley said the site’s position in the Green Belt meant its use as a car park breached planning policies and caused harm to the area.

Clearly the National Trust is not Dedman Properties. On the contrary, the NT is a charity set up to protect the countryside and historic properties. But while the National Trust’s bottomless publicly-funded marketing budget fosters a myth that its heart is on the side of the environment angels, its recent actions reveal it as no different from Dedman or any other property developer.

What do you think? Tell the editor.

National Trust justifies its proposals

The National Trust issued the following statement to the Bugle tonight:
Date: 30 July 2007 17:28:16 BDT
Subject: Polesden Lacey Car Park Charges

Statement from the National Trust in the South East
30 July 2007

Polesden Lacey Proposals For The Introduction Of Pay & Display Car Park Charging

'A policy decision taken by the National Trust Board of Trustees and Council to allow parking charges to be implemented across Trust properties as well as the introduction of parking badges for National Trust members to display in their car windows, has enabled such charges to form part of the forthcoming arrangements for access to the Polesden Lacey estate.

'At present, visitors to Polesden Lacey who are not members of the National Trust have to pay £6.50 per person to use the car park and access the estate and garden, which is only open from 11am to 5pm; under the new arrangements, the car park will be open from 7.30am to 6pm (or dusk if later) and will cost £2.50 per car, which gives access to the estate, landscape walks and, by the end of next year, shop and tea room. There will be no charge for National Trust members to park and of course they will continue to have free access to the formal grounds and mansion during opening hours.

'There is a commonly held misconception that the National Trust is a wealthy organisation. The National Trust is a charity and is completely independent of government; therefore it receives no direct government funding, but instead relies on other forms of income, including admission fees from those who enjoy the properties as well as subscriptions from members, to help preserve these special places. All of the Trust’s properties have to be managed and maintained and this of course comes at a cost; for example, the major roof repairs carried out at Polesden Lacey in 2003 cost around £500,000 whilst the annual cost of looking after Ranmore Common and the wider Polesden Lacey estate is around £100,000. Each year the National Trust spends about £200 million on conservation of buildings and countryside.'

'The main casualty of this proposal is the intrinsic amenity value of the chestnut meadow as a place to visit and from which to enjoy extensive views'

'The greatest weakness of this proposal is its repeated failure to recognise the needs of anyone but the Trust’s visitors, a clear departure from the Mole Valley Local Development Framework.

'The new car park location also departs from ENV5 and ENV6 of the local development plan, which prohibit any development which does not conserve and enhance the local landscape.

'The proposal would cause massive losses of amenity to hundreds of local residents. The pay perimeter will deny local dog walkers and young families the immediate access to the grounds they have enjoyed for decades.

'But the Trust document’s obsession with screening the new car park from outside wilfully fails to address the main casualty of this proposal - the intrinsic amenity value of the chestnut meadow as a place to visit and from which to enjoy extensive views.

'Whatever the proposal says, the existing car park cannot be seen from most of the estate, and grassing it over doesn’t go anywhere near compensating for the tragic, irreversible loss of this meadow. The solution is a hundred times worse than the disease.

'Providing free parking near new shops must encourage more visitors and more traffic. The local impact will be significantly worsened when the overflow car park is in use – and it will be used much more often than the proposals acknowledge.

'The Trust claims visitors are entitled to be free of “the intrusive sight, sound and smell of traffic” but is happy to impose them on the rest of us. There is no such entitlement.

'The Trust’s health and safety concerns are bogus. It can identify no accidents under the current arrangements. And moving danger, pollution and congestion into an unspoiled meadow creates a new danger to horse riders on the bridleway.

'If unseen noise causes a horse to bolt south, a steep, treacherous downward tarmac surface lies ahead, posing danger both to novice riders and to children and other pedestrians in a confined space.

'Any decision to allow the National Trust to extend the estate’s built footprint into open countryside in an area of outstanding natural beauty and great landscape value will leave the planning policy not just of Mole Valley but Surrey and beyond in tatters.

'Finally, the officer’s report highly overstates the level of support for the Trust proposals. Two copies have reached me of a letter the Trust wrote to its volunteers on January 13 pressing them to send the Council letters of support. I would like to ask the committee to defer a decision on the proposal until it can ascertain how many of the 49 letters of support came from volunteers and how many are genuinely independent.

'With a little imagination, all the trust’s reasonable objectives could be met without the loss of the meadow. We insist the Trust tell us which part of its plan cannot be implemented without moving the car park.

'This application is unacceptable and, in the cause of recognising the needs of everyone, must not be accepted.'

Another bite at the planning cherry

30 July 2007: The National Trust has applied to Mole Valley District Council (MVDC) for fresh planning permission for two pay & display meters, the Bugle can reveal.

MVDC received the Trust's application on July 17. In a statement to the Bugle tonight, Polesden Lacey's property manager, Andrea Selley, told us there would be no pay booth in the Cow Field, 'only the car park meters, if we are granted planning permission.'

Given the controversy surrounding its original application to turn the Cow Field into a car park this is a highly embarrassing development for the National Trust.

One of the concerns raised when planning permission was granted at a Mole Valley planning committee debate on March 1, 2006, was that the Trust might come back to the committee for more.

The particular concern raised then was that the Trust would seek to enlarge the car park northwards. While that's not (yet) an issue, for the Trust to come back to the table so soon will revive doubts about whether the Trust was wholly honest about revealing its eventual intentions for the site.

Withdrawn bus service adds further twist to the Cow Field saga

July 31, 2007: Not only has the National Trust decided to renege on what appears to have been a promise to local nabobs to offer free parking at Polesden Lacey. It has also withdrawn the bus service that, in some eyes, might have justified the car parking charges.

Last Thursday the Bugle wrote to local NT property manager Andrea Selley to ask why the Surrey Hills Explorer bus service to Polesden Lacey had been withdrawn. The news that the NT1 Explorer Bus from Dorking to Polesden Lacey would not operate in 2007 had been posted on a local website. Neither Surrey County Council nor Mole Valley would comment on the closure of the service.

In an email last Friday Selley told the Bugle: 'For a number of reasons, it was decided last year, with much regret, that the Surrey Hills Explorer Bus service would no longer be operating in 2007 and beyond.

'When the bus service was set up five years ago, by the National Trust with support from the Countryside Agency and the Surrey Hills AONB, it was agreed the service would run for five years and if it was not covering its costs at the end of this time then the service would cease.

'Over these five years the service has not become self funding; with costs in the region of £27,000 net to run the service each year, and passenger numbers never exceeding 2,000 a year. With limited funding opportunities available, the National Trust and its partners decided to halt operations at the end of the 2006 season.'

'We do plan to investigate the provision of a simple minibus shuttle service from Dorking to Polesden Lacey, Clandon Park, Hatchlands Park and Guildford in the future.'

The news adds a further dash of scarlet to red faces at the National Trust and the Bookham Residents’ Association (BRA) over the Polesden Lacey car park.

The National Trust can justify the charges because it now has a national policy of encouraging visitors to walk, cycle or use public transport to reach its properties. But the withdrawal of the bus service coupled with the parking charges makes the Trust look greedy, calculating, opportunistic and hypocritical.

The Bookham Residents’ Association now looks naïve for supporting the car park in the first place.

How Moore let us all down

On March 1 Mole Valley District Council (MVDC) gave the National Trust planning permission for the new car park it had set its heart on at Polesden Lacey. The new site is on top of a hill in once unspoilt parkland.

Its location in the Green Belt, in an area of outstanding natural beauty (AONB) and an area of great landscape value (AGLV) breaches 13 national and local planning policies and guidelines.

Both the decision to build it and the decision to give its developer planning permission are shameful and a scandal. This is not just because building unnecessary car parks on hills in open countryside is, by and large, a bad idea. Nor because some middle-class Bookham residents take the loss of this place, dismissed by the NT as 'the Cow Field', as a deep personal blow.

The true scandal is the lack of any debate or consultation which took the feelings of any Bookham residents into account. If objectors had lost the battle after a debate in which they were allowed to explain why this place should not be destroyed, they would have accepted it. As it is, no such debate took place.

Who spoke up?
Come the planning meeting itself, you would expect Bookham's councillors to speak up for us and fill that gap - as indeed they had promised to do in emails to protesters. One, South Bookham's Andrew Freeman (Lib Dem) did. But the star opposition role fell to Julian Shersby (Con). That is distinctly odd, not just because Shersby represents Capel, 10 miles away, but because he was going against a current of opinion the NT had nourished in his own party. (The party took its revenge two months later when it gave him so little support that he lost his seat.)

Though not against making NT visitors more comfortable, Shersby noted again that the NT proposal was against planning policy guidance 2, which says inappropriate development in the Green Belt cannot be justified unless the harm is clearly outweighed by other considerations.

Why, he asked, was the council ignoring the feelings of 'surrounding residents who feel that their amenity will be very badly affected? Purely, it seems, in order that the business of the NT can be expanded and that their visitors can have a more comfortable day out. Well it is nice that the visitors can have a more comfortable day out but, on the other hand, shouldn't local residents be protected?'

Who didn't?
When Cllr Tony Moore (Con) intervened to tell the meeting he was a Bookham resident, that was the last mention 'Bookham resident' got. Moore (above left) set his tone with: 'I would be reluctant to support a proposal to refuse permission and would seek to find ways in which we can approve it.' Why?

Hardly what you'd expect from someone who, unbelievably, is a former chairman of Mole Valley's Environment Committee. But as far as he was concerned, the 'critical issue' was not, as you'd expect, either the environment or the aspirations and concerns of the people in his ward but 'the efficient management of this very important site for not only the community of Mole Valley but the community of this country, and also the preservation of Polesden Lacey House itself and its setting.'

From the point of view of any Bookham resident with an open mind, it was a disgraceful speech. In private, we are told, Cllr Moore is a hard man to dislike. To judge by this grovelling performance, it is well worth the effort. You don't need to know what else he said - it's all in the planning application he was supposed to be subjecting to rigorous forensic examination. If you came to the meeting looking for incisive surgical analysis it was like watching an appendectomy performed with a banana.

The good news about people like councillor Moore is that we can get rid of them. The bad news is that Moore's retirement - he isn't standing next week - robs us of the chance to show him what we think.
Article updated 23 February 2007

Picture courtesy of MVDC

After considerable reflection, the Bugle's editor agrees that a public apology is due and is happy to make it here.

The editor would like to make it clear that, with hindsight, his attempts to collect £1 from residents in Lower Road in 2005 in his capacity as a BRA road steward on the grounds that the BRA would represent their interests were deeply misguided. The editor bitterly regrets this lapse of judgement. He made these mis-statements in all innocence and promises never to be duped again. 'I am easily led and fell in with the wrong crowd,' he told a hastily convened and crowded hearing at Lower Road Magistrates Court. Sentencing was adjourned for reports….

Who says the BRA speaks for us?

Few are chosen

No attempt to collect views

Blind spot

Late interventions

Refusal to answer

Selective opposition to planning applications