COUNCILLORS have granted Crest Nicholson permission to demolish a cottage at the heart of the Brightwells regeneration scheme without first completing a temporary construction access over the River Wey as promised, or providing evidence that the cottage is no longer home to two bat roosts as claimed by the developer in 2012.

Waverley Borough Council’s joint planning committee met on Tuesday to determine Crest’s latest application for a non-material amendment (NMA) to the 2012 planning consent for Brightwells - on this occasion to vary the phasing plan for the mixed-use redevelopment on public land south of East Street.

In 2012 councillors insisted on a condition requiring the developer to build a temporary access bridge connecting the Brightwells site to the A31 prior to commencing construction, to avoid construction traffic using the town centre’s roads. Work on this bridge is expected to commence in early August, requiring a two month lane closure on the A31 Farnham bypass.

However, having secured planning permission for a larger bridge last month, Crest now claims Brightwell Cottage, a small groundskeeper’s cottage in the grounds of Grade II-listed Brightwell House, must be demolished earlier than planned to make way for the bridge’s own temporary construction access - a controversial ‘haul road’ along the picturesque Borelli Walk to South Street.

This was condemned at the meeting by Farnham Residents’ group leader and former Mayor of Farnham, John Ward, as “quite unacceptable and actually quite offensive”, adding “we do not want any trucks carrying rubble trundling through our town”.

Waverley’s case officer Louise Yandell reassured members that all spoil from the cottage’s demolition would be kept on site until the bridge was completed, and Tory councillor Michael Goodridge responded: “All we’re talking about is the odd workman coming onto the site to operate the machinery.”

But concern was also raised over the two maternity roosts of pipistrelle bats that Crest itself claimed were living in the roofspace of Brightwell Cottage in 2013, when proposing a ‘bat house’ to mitigate for the cottage’s loss.

The developer has since denied the presence of the roosts when applying for three ‘bat poles’ in place of the bat house earlier this year - but is yet to provide evidence of this in public.

Addressing the bats issue, another Farnham Residents councillor Jerry Hyman accused Brightwells partners Crest and Waverley of seeking to bring forward demolition of the cottage without fully assessing its environmental impacts, adding: “Crest Nicholson would not have proposed a bat house as compensation for the loss of Brightwell House if those maternity roosts did not exist.”

Councillors voted 18 in favour of Crest’s latest NMA to just two against.