DEVELOPERS hoping to build up to 180 new homes in a Haslemere Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB) are under fire for ‘green wash’.

Redwood property developers have just concluded a public consultation on pre-application plans to increase the draft site allocation in Waverley Borough Council’s Local Plan part two from 50 houses to 180 at Red Court Estate in Scotland Lane.

But supporting statements to promote the scheme have upset local organisations, including Haslemere Town Council, for implying they are in favour of the proposals.

Responding, Redwood said: “We sincerely apologise if any inference of support has been mistakenly aligned with any local community members or groups.”

Full statement on Page 30, see also Letters on Page 29.

First to publicly object in a letter to the Herald on May 30, was Haslemere’s eight-strong confederation of schools, which stressed it remained officially neutral.

Haslemere Town Council and neighbourhood plan group Haslemere Vision have now gone public (see Letters Page 28) to deny they have endorsed pre-application housing proposals. The Waverley District of the Surrey branch of Campaign to Protect Rural England (CPRE) has also denied suggestions it supports the scheme.

Surrey CPRE director Andy Smith said: “This is a prime example of ‘green wash’ whereby developers pretend that their schemes are environmentally sustainable when in reality they are anything but.”

Anthony Isaacs, CPRE Waverley District chairman added: “The developers of Red Court claim in their literature that the proposals to build 180 houses on green fields designated as an area of great landscape value and/or within the Surrey Hills AONB ‘conform and align absolutely’ with CPRE policies on access to National Parks and AONBs.

“Most emphatically we do not share that view.”