CHAIRMAN of the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) South East region, Laith Anayi, has called on Farnham people to stand up and take control of development in their historic town.

Speaking ahead of ‘Recrafting Farnham’ - a community brainstorming event taking place at Farnham Maltings on Saturday, January 30, Mr Anayi criticised the Government’s emerging Housing Bill for placing quantity above quality and said the time is now for local people to take a more active role in the planning process.

A director of Stedman Blower Architects based at Coxbridge Farm and himself a Farnham resident for the past 25 years, Mr Anayi told The Herald: “Waverley Borough Council is under tremendous pressure to allow more housing in the borough, up to 9,000 by 2031, and a large chunk of that in Farnham.

“But with the borough’s Local Plan and Farnham’s Neighbourhood Plan still in their development stages, there is currently very little planning on a local level to say where these new homes can go, what they should look like and whether we can fit them in at all.

“If you think back to the Georgian, Victorian and the inter-war period in the 1930s, there were huge drives to build houses but it was co-ordinated and designed.

“We don’t have that anymore and instead we’re stuck in a very reactive process where developers tell us what they’re going to build and people only have an opportunity to judge it at the consultation stage.

“A few years ago the Government talked about Localism, but that seems to have been slightly abandoned for free-for-all development. I think we should demand better for Farnham.”

Mr Anayi added the new Housing Bill, which was debated in the House of Lords on Tuesday, will effectively de-regulate the planning process which he fears will further limit Farnham people’s ability to influence the development of their town.

“The problem with de-regulation is you end up with the developers building whatever they want and with the pressure from the Government to deliver houses, quality goes out of the window,” he continued.

“When you worry about numbers, that’s all you worry about and actually it’s the wrong argument. I think you should say ‘we will fit in what we can fit in, as long as we can do it well’. If it’s just a case of shoe-horning it in then forget it.

“You need to show structure and make sure any new development fits within that structure. Only then do you know that all the crucial infrastructure like sewerage, roads and schools are considered.

“Those aren’t the kinds of issues you can brush under the carpet and forget about until a later date. They need to be considered right at the outset, else the current system will implode. Housing has to follow infrastructure, I don’t think there’s anyway around it.”

Mr Anayi praised Farnham Town Council and Waverley Borough Council for its work on the Neighbourhood Plan and Local Plan respectively, but stressed that design and not just numbers must be at the forefront of local planning policy.

He added Recrafting Farnham is not intended to detract from the town or borough councils’ policies, but to “enrich” the process with a separate discussion - “not about how many houses we need, but how do we create a vibrant community”.

“The new Local Plan and Neighbourhood Plan needs to be strong enough that everyone in Farnham can stand next to it and say ‘this is what we expect, this is the benchmark; anything below that then forget it, anything above it then great’. It’s about finding that benchmark that’s the important bit.

“We’ve got a very Georgian town but it’s grown over a period of time. Farnham has elements of Georgian, Victorian, Edwardian and more contemporary buildings, but it all combines to create a patchwork; a sort of tapestry of interest that shows a town that’s having a vibrancy that’s growing and continuously evolving.

“I live in a Victorian semi-detached house and the gardens are the right size, the rooms are the right size, there is a play space quite nearby and the community grows up around the street and it becomes a joy to live there.

“An element of civic pride builds up because our buildings are quite beautiful. But I look at a lot of new developments where houses have just been shoe-horned in with little thought towards space and place, and ask do all the people who live there have the same pride?

“I don’t personally mind if a new building is contemporary or traditional in style, as long as it offers an elegant solution, both in the way it looks and functions. You can kill an area by being insensitive to it, and by dropping insensitive development on Farnham it could be catastrophic.”

Building up to the event on Saturday, Mr Anayi and the Recrafting Farnham team have challenged architectural practices across Farnham to come up with their own ideas for the future development of Farnham.

These include schemes for Dogflud Way, an outdoor amphitheatre in Farnham Park (pictured), a cultural centre and housing development in Central car park and a new road system around the railway station - all of which will be exhibited at the exhibition.

The RIBA South East chairman has also led sessions in schools across Farnham and invites people of all ages to drop in to the Maltings and join in with the conversation.

Mr Anayi said: “The event is basically a conversation starter. We’ve got a big map of Farnham, rolls of tracing paper, Post It notes, loads of Lego and Minecraft and the idea is just to have that conversation, take the brief and then through a process of discussion distill that process down into a series of images, articulating the desires of the community to be re-exhibited in April.

“We’re asking that people forget money and planning for one moment, and express what the community wants and what’s important to them. If you show what the possibilities are and be positive, change can happen.”

• Recrafting Farnham will take place between 10am and 4pm on Saturday, January 30, in the Barley Room of the Farnham Maltings.