CLAIMS by campaign group Protect Our Waverley (POW) that Waverley Borough Council meekly submitted to a higher housing target of building 11,210 homes by 2031, have been dismissed as “simply untrue”.

POW, which has launched High Court proceedings challenging Waverley’s Local Plan Part One agreement to accommodate Woking’s unmet housing need, upped the ante this week by saying Guildford Borough Council (GBC), in contrast, was “standing up to their Local Plan”.

Last week, GBC responded to the government inspector’s preliminary questions on its own Local Plan to say it rejected the proposal to take part of Woking’s unmet need because it considered Woking’s unmet need was lower than previously assessed, based on evidence from the same consultants, G L Hearn, used by Waverley.

GBC considered that as Woking is now required to review its Core Strategy, it could find it is able to meet the need itself.

“This challenge to Inspector Bore should properly have been made by Waverley Borough Council itself, at the time of the public examination, but they stayed silent despite having themselves challenged Woking earlier in the year,” POW chairman Bob Lees said.

“Before Waverley complains about legal challenges and costs, they should reflect on why they didn’t employ G L Hearn to run the same calculations as Guildford have now done. If they had they would have been able to argue a strong case against Inspector Bore increasing Waverley’s housing numbers to the unsustainable level we now have and the planning blight this has inflicted across our borough for the next 15 years.”

Strongly rebutting the charges, a Waverley spokesman said: “To say that Waverley Borough Council stayed silent during the examination regarding the inclusion of Woking’s unmet housing need is simply untrue. It was robustly defended during the Local Plan examination.

“It is a matter of public record that the council argued against meeting a proportion of Woking’s unmet need; we argued against it in our response to the Inspector’s initial questions in March 2017; this was reiterated in our response the Inspector’s matters and issues for examination in May 2017; and clearly articulated during the public examination hearings.

“Inspector Bore took a different view and concluded that Waverley had to accommodate a proportion of the unmet housing need from Woking in order for the plan to be found sound.”

Waverley Council has approved an extra £100,000 to defend itself against judicial review challenges to its Local Plan housing policies not only by by POW, and also by the Surrey branch of the Campaign to Protect Rural England and Milford residents Timothy and Isobel House.

Local taxpayers could foot a potential bill of £200,000 and Waverley Leader Farnham councillor Julia Potts told the committee it was “absolutely despicable” that tax payers money had to be used to defend its “much needed” Local Plan, and the borough council would take “all measures” to recover its costs in full.