A NEW report commissioned by the Campaign to Protect Rural England (CPRE) claims that the housing target in Waverley’s emerging Local Plan is overstated by at least 29 per cent - equivalent to a total of 2,500 houses over the plan’s lifespan to 2032.

A housing target of 590 houses per annum, or 11,210 homes over the life of the plan, is expected to be imposed on Waverley Borough Council as a result of the recent planning inspector’s examination-in-public - including an uplift to Farnham’s allocation from 2,330 to 2,780 houses, undermining the Farnham Neighbourhood Plan and threatening greenfield sites surrounding the town.

However, the McDonald Report, which the Surrey branch of the CPRE says is based on “a comprehensive and up-to-date analysis of the relevant factors”, states this modified figure is significantly overstated and based on “a mixture of out-of-date information and uncertain assumptions”.

Key to the report’s conclusions are that the assessment of Woking’s unmet housing need, half of which the inspector wishes to impose on Waverley, is “unsound” - being derived from an untested estimate of the Woking Objectively Assessed Need (OAN) put forward in representations to the inspector made on behalf of developers.

“Reassessment of Woking’s housing need, in the context of the West Surrey Housing Market Area, of which Woking, Guildford and Waverley are all part, is now due,” states the report.

The report adds there is “no reliable basis to reach any conclusion on the quantum of Woking’s unmet need nor to impose any of it on Waverley” - and recommends that 83 houses per annum, 1,577 homes in all, should be deducted from the inspector’s housing target for Waverley.

The report also dismisses the inspector’s 25 per cent uplift over Waverley’s agreed demographic housing requirement as “arbitrary, unsound and severe” - recommending that 50 homes per annum, not the 99 proposed by the inspector, be added to Waverley’s housing target to improve affordability for market housing.

These two important adjustments would reduce the inspector’s housing requirement for Waverley by 2,508 homes to a total of 8,702 over the plan period, removing the 29 per cent over-statement claimed by the CPRE.

Anthony Isaacs, chairman of CPRE Surrey’s local Waverley committee, said: “The impact of these changes would be of fundamental importance during the life of the plan period. They would contribute to Waverley’s new plan being declared ‘sound’ and would help to ensure that throughout the plan period the borough would be able to control development under its own sound plan rather than one under threat of excessive housing numbers rendering the plan out of date for lack of a five-year housing supply.”

The report’s findings are being presented to Waverley’s consultation on the Local Plan changes, which expires on October 20, and also to the Planning Inspectorate and the Secretary of State for Communities & Local Government.

The proposed modifications to Waverley’s Local Plan have also been criticised for rendering the Farnham Neighbourhood Plan out-of-date just weeks after its adoption in late July - recommending an early review of the Farnham plan in order to accommodate the uplift in Farnham’s housing allocation.

Speaking at last week’s annual meeting of the South Farnham Residents Association, Farnham Town Council leader Carole Cockburn appealed for Farnham residents to support the Neighbourhood Plan and contribute to Waverley’s consultation before it is too late.

She said: “We should be celebrating, waving our plan in the air, singing and dancing, safe in the knowledge that we have prepared a plan which has withstood developers, been judged in the High Court, and has been endorsed well and truly at the referendum.

“But finding an extra 450 homes now, as Waverley wants us to do, is a problem for the Farnham Neighbourhood Plan because we’ve already looked at all the sites that are available in this area and we’ve selected the ones that are going to deliver the 2,330 homes initially required of us.

“If we have to choose more sites now, we have to choose the likes of Waverley Lane, the land at Folly Hill, east of Farnham Park, because there are no others available at the moment other than the ones that we have already looked at and rejected.

“The consultation is complicated, but there are two main modifications that we’re asking you to look at. One, MM1, asks Farnham to do its review now, to tear up this plan and start again now, and the other, MM3, gives us the 450 homes while leaving Waverley’s largest brownfield site Dunsfold Park without a single new home.

“The Neighbourhood Plan took five years of hard work to write, it was supported by the town, and it should have time to do its job. That’s what we’re really asking you to say, to ask the inspector if we could possibly do what we were always intending to do, which is a later review of the plan, and to ask him why there has been no uplift at Dunsfold Park.”