Sir, – After the public meeting, so excellently organised by the town council, it is abundantly clear that the Health Centre will move to the new hospital site and not seek to re-develop the existing centre in Brightwells.

Such confirmation must now concentrate our responses to the proposal recently submitted for development on the old cinema site.

The developers, CRM Project Managers and T A Fisher, in their argument laid great store by the health centre aspect and invited public sympathy for their monstrous building on that account.

No doubt the void now created could be used for domestic and commercial use but we remain with the building, now without its originally perceived advantage.

For those who have not yet seen a drawing, it is up to four storeys in height, dwarfs those buildings on its flanks and towers over the Redgrave.

Its architectural design and mass has been described as more suited to Reading than Farnham.

Such height is supported by its designers as being of a nature with its opposite neighbour, the Woolmead building. I had long had the idea that the whole concept of the East Street project was to escape from that, not to reflect it.

Furthermore, of course, this proposal, were it accepted, would set the marker for the rest of the East Street development area and, like trees in the jungle, all buildings would seek to reach the sun. Not, I think, the seamless joining of the old part of the town with the new.

We do not know how this proposal will be viewed by Waverley; indeed we do not know what the developers will do if it is refused. Will they go to appeal?

Will the Waverley policies generally and for East Street in particular, be strong enough to refute it?

In their support for the East Street project the Farnham Society pressed for the

exclusion of any four-storey proposals, fearing just such a case as this.

I suggest that the town must be awake to this proposal and be ready to oppose it, as the society already has.

R K Broughton

Chairman

The Farnham Society

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