The impact of coronavirus epidemic is being felt right across the UK and unfortunately, the Cobham Farmers Market and Cobham Heritage Litterpicks have had to be suspended for the foreseeable future.
In our email of last week, we said we would be keeping the running of our AGM and open meeting on Wednesday 18th March 2020 under review.
Over the last few days, the deterioration of the general situation has been gathering pace and with the latest advice that the over 70’s should from tomorrow socially distance themselves and should not attend or conduct meetings such as ours, it would be socially irresponsible for us to go ahead. Therefore, regretfully we are having to postpone our AGM and open meeting to later in the year and we apologise for any inconvenience this might cause.
We hope that, in the meantime, you and your families keep well.
Elmbridge Borough Council is launching a new community lottery, to raise funds for charities and good causes Like us which are active in the borough. Tickets are available from the lottery website (https://www.elmbridgelottery.co.uk/), and 50% of the ticket price will go to a good cause chosen by the purchaser when the ticket is purchased.
Tickets cost £1 and weekly draws will take place from 28th March 2020 with the jackpot being £25,000 and a range of other cash prizes.
Cobham Conservation and Heritage Trust have signed up as one of the Elmbridge Lottery good causes in order to give everyone who purchases tickets the opportunity to support us.
If you decide to participate in the lottery, please consider choosing Cobham Conservation and Heritage Trust as the good cause which will benefit: we would receive 50p in every £1 spent with another 10p going to a general good causes fund.
To play the lottery and nominate Cobham Heritage as your nominated good cause, click on the button below.
Play the Elmbridge Lottery and support Cobham Heritage
Thank you to those who supported the Trust’s submissions on a ‘new’ Parking SPD and a ‘revised’ Development Contributions SPD which closed on 4th February 2020. A further consultation referred to in our last message to members referred to a wider exercise titled by the Council as “Creating our vision, objectives and the direction for development management policies”. This is to enable them to take the process to a final phase in the autumn with the Local Plan that it formulates for the next 15 years. That will in turn to go to the Government Inspector after a further consultation. It may not then be easy to amend to any great extent and the importance of this consultation is that it is almost the last chance for residents to make their wider views known. This consultation closes on Monday 9th March 2020.
The Trust’s Planning Team have attended workshops and have reviewed what the Council have suggested as the emerging key issues policies and challenges. To assist members in answering the questions posed by the Council in the consultation it has drawn up some suggested responses as below.
The Council say it is aiming for 'good' growth in our borough. After inspection and adoption, the Local Plan will guide decisions on whether or not planning applications should be granted permission.
The Council say that the consultation is not about housing numbers and the Green Belt. They point to there having already been 2 consultations on that. But it is arguable that the current exercise on “Vision” should have been undertaken before housing numbers were looked at. The Trust considers that in any event the Council must again take note that in consultations, the public across the Borough overwhelmingly chose option 4 - safeguarding the Green Belt.
In the current consultation, the Council provide a huge amount of material that is relevant, including policies at national and Surrey level. It is difficult for the Trust to summarise all that for you. Remember however that the feedback from residents and stakeholders (such as developers) has to be considered. The Council, in posing a series of questions for residents to respond to, themselves identify what it considers important.
The process of responding can take some time but the Trust feels important to persevere if you feel able. To review the background you can go to
To go straight to the Council’s questions you should go to
It is worth identifying at this stage that there is an opportunity at the end of questions posed to upload a file but the Trust believes it would be best to answer the questions in the boxes provided if you feel able.
The Questions with Comments document below, shows the council’s list of issues which they present for their questions, annotated with comments from The Trust in red. It is hoped these lists and our comments in red will assist members in formulating their own responses. The Trust will be writing in itself making the points identified in red on the document.
Download/View Questions with Comments
Local residents who took part in the Local Plan consultation last Autumn (and thank you to the many who did) are likely to have received emails from Elmbridge Borough Council about some ongoing consultations.
Consultations are now taking place on three separate topics:-
We will be advising members on the vision consultation (item 3) in the course of the coming weeks. For the two SPDs presently under consultation, given the complexity of the documents under consideration and their attachments, the intricacy of the process and the limited time given, the Trustees resolved that the Trust’s planning team should send in a letter to the EBC Planning Department summarising our views on each consultation (see our letters below).
There are many such SPD’s that together with national policies and the Local Plan itself are important when judging planning applications. While some of these consultations are aimed in the first instance at ‘managing’ the existing Local Plan the results will play a role in the development and implementation of the new Local Plan. Accordingly the Trust considers these consultations similarly to that of the Local Plan itself.
We would recommend you look at and write in support of these letters or make your own comments, either by email (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.), as we have, or via the consultation website (see links below). Please note that such letters of support and/or comments need to be sent before 4th February 2020. We are sorry for the short notice but the consultation period was short.
Consultation Links:
Parking SPD -https://consult.elmbridge.gov.uk/consult.ti/parking/consultationHome
Development Contributions SPD- https://consult.elmbridge.gov.uk/consult.ti/SPDs/consultationHome
For your reference, the documents EBC wish you to comment upon can be downloaded from the following links:
Planning Team,
Cobham Conservation and Heritage Trust
Currently, we have a selection of books published by the Trust (including the recently published Cobham Remembers book) and hope to expand the products available over the coming year. We also plan to provide the option to purchase new Trust memberships and the renewal of existing memberships.
To purchase from the online shop, please visit shop.cobhamheritage.org.uk
We accept Paypal, Credit Cards and Debit Cards.
The Cobham Conservation and Heritage Trust (CCHT) was relaunched in November 2005 from the Cobham Conservation Group. You can find out more about the Trust on the About Us page.
We hope you enjoy exploring our website and find the information interesting and stimulating and if you are not already a member that this will spur you on to join and support us. Click on the Membership menu for more details.
The Cobham Conservation and Heritage Trust is a local charity which relies on vounteers to help run the Trust, promote local history and conservation issues and organise fund raising events such as our annual Cobham Heritage Day. If you think you might like to join us, visit our Volunteer Vacancies page to find out which roles you might like to get involved with. We always try to make it fun.
Green Flag Award
Open Spaces Award