Sir, – I enjoyed a very enlightening few days recently when I attended the public enquiry into the proposed eco-village development at Dunsfold Park. People from different parts of Waverley joined together to support a scheme that could provide more than 900 new affordable homes and meet the needs of some of the less well-heeled residents in this affluent borough who have been waiting in vain for Waverley Council to make any significant inroads into its huge waiting list for social and affordable housing.
I wonder just how much more support there might have been if it had been possible for residents outside the immediate areas of Godalming, Cranleigh and the villages nearby to access information about this exemplary development scheme via the local news media. Our newspapers obviously have to serve their own particular catchment areas but what about Waverley Council?
Until recently, the council published and distributed to all residents an excellent publication, The Link, which featured news items from every part of the borough. Sadly, when the new council took over in 2007, The Link disappeared and a new municipal publication, Making Waves, in purely parochial separate editions, took its place. This has had the effect of fragmenting the Waverley knowledge base for residents who are no longer encouraged to feel that they are part of a Waverley community and, by contrast, may well feel that they have nothing in common and nothing worth supporting outside their own neighbourhood, as now so narrowly defined by their own council.
The precarious nature of our world with climate change and global economic meltdown must surely demand that we work together as a community for the best outcomes for the future for everyone in our borough. We should be looking for cohesion and not fragmentation. Newspapers have for centuries been a force to drive conscience in the right direction. We have the example of William Cobbett, our local hero, who campaigned tirelessly for the country folk. Do we need another Cobbett to bring back community ideals or is there a newspaper proprietor out there who might provide Waverley residents with a voice around which to unite, as the borough council seems to have abandoned the project?
Celia Sandars, Old Church Lane, Vicarage Hill, Farnham