Give your views on new levy on developers

Guildford Borough Council is asking for feedback on its proposals for how much developers will have to pay towards the cost of local infrastructure in the future.

The Community Infrastructure Levy (CIL) is a new charge system which lets councils fund, provide, replace or maintain infrastructure (such as transport, schools, GPs surgeries and playgrounds) with funds raised from new developments with the council deciding how much has to be paid per square metre of development.

The consultation runs until 1 March 2015 so if you want to make your views heard then you can respond to the online survey here.

More details about train station redevelopment

Solum Regeneration, the company behind the planning application to redevelop Guildford train station, held two public exhibitions in January to let people find out more about their plans and to give their views. For those who missed the exhibitions, more details have now been published on their website.

The scheme is planned to cost £150 million and will involve redeveloping the station concourse and building 445 homes and a multi-storey car park.

If you want to give your views on the proposed redevelopment then you can give Solum your views here and you can find the planning application on the council website and officially comment on it here.

Personally speaking, while I’m in favour in principle of improving the railway station (particularly creating more space for bicycles) and building more homes in the town centre, I’m still quite dubious about the wisdom of putting so many new cars on the road right next to the already clogged gyratory and I do think they should be doing a lot more to link up with the bus network. So for me this is a wait and see what the final proposal looks like situation.

Local businesses missing out on rates cut

Hundreds of local small and medium size businesses are missing out on business rate discounts which they’re entitled to.

The cost of the discounts is paid entirely by national government but unfortunately Conservative-run Guildford council have been useless when it comes to letting local businesses know that they’re eligible for these discounts.

For example, any retail business with a rateable value (e.g. the official estimate market rent) of less than £50,000 a year can get a £1,000 discount on the business rates they have to pay. There are over 900 businesses in the borough eligible for these discounts but only a fraction of them have applied for them.

Another scheme is that small businesses with a rateable value of up to £12,000 can get up to a 100% discount on rates until March 2015 but again, many small businesses don’t know that they can claim this discount.

There are also discounts for empty new build business premises and for businesses moving into premises which have previously been empty.

But since the council hasn’t written to businesses to let them know if they’re eligible for these schemes it will only be a minority of businesses which have applied for them. So a useful government scheme which could be helping small companies in Guildford, particularly on our high street, and creating jobs isn’t working anywhere near as well as it could be because of Guildford council failing to give people information about it.

This, in many ways, is typical of the council – all too quick to chase after you if they think you owe them money but utterly silent when it comes to letting you know how you can get back money you’re entitled to.

Now, as a Liberal Democrat I believe in standing up for small and medium size businesses, not just big business. Because of that I’ll be going round as many local businesses as I can in Onslow to let them know about these schemes.

But it really shouldn’t be me doing this – it should be the council. I think it’s such a shame that the Conservatives aren’t doing more to help local businesses claim the support they’re entitled to.

For more information about any of these schemes and how to apply then please click here.

Local Plan Fiasco

Guildford Borough Council’s Conservative administration have been forced to take the Local Plan back to the drawing board.

Following widespread public objections, the draft local plan for Guildford, which proposes building 2,500 homes on Blackwell Farm in the greenbelt north of the Hog’s Back, will be consulted on for a third time following May’s local elections. The first consultation took place over the summer and resulted in 18,000 comments from 6,500 individuals.

The news comes following a Lib Dem freedom of information request which revealed that the bungled plan to build 13,040 has already cost the taxpayer £250,000.

Guildford Liberal Democrats previously voted against the draft plan going out to the original consultation on the grounds that it was flawed and premature.

Onslow Lib Dem councillor Tony Phillips commented “Guildford Lib Dems voted against the draft Plan going out for consultation, it just wasn’t ready. We thought the consultation was premature and sadly we have been proved right. It cost a lot of money to run this consultation, and local taxpayers are going to have to foot the bill again next year.”

We’re now calling for two key changes to the Council’s approach to the Local Plan, to make sure that the Council gets it right this time:

  • The proposed housing target needs to be evaluated. It would lead to massive traffic congestion, environmental degradation and unnecessary loss of precious Green Belt countryside.
  • The Local Plan should be produced bottom-up: the Borough Council must consult and involve all Borough Councillors and the communities they represent in the preparation of the next draft.

Landlord accreditation for Guildford

There’s good news for local residents as a new accreditation scheme for rented properties comes a step closer.

As reported by the Guildford Dragon, an outline proposal for the scheme to raise housing standards and improve property management was agreed at Guildford Borough’s Council’s latest Executive meeting.

Actions to improve areas of concern will be taken in the meantime – covering waste recycling, maintenance of gardens and parking.

This is largely thanks to Cllr Caroline Reeves who’s the leader of the Lib Dem group on the council.  As Chair of the Task and Finish group, Caroline led the investigation that produced the proposal for the new scheme.

As I know full well, it’s impossible to speak to local residents without realising the on-going problems relating to houses of multiple occupancy in many parts of the town.

But an accreditation scheme will fix this problem in the long term by making landlords and letting agents take better care of their properties and take more responsibility for their tenants. At the same time it’s likely to improve community relations between tenants and neighbours by ending the kind of problems which cause conflicts.

Once the scheme is implemented then, the more landlords that sign up to it, the more tenants who will be living in better quality accommodation and the fewer neighbours who’ll have to deal with the impact of houses which aren’t properly maintained where rubbish is left on the streets or in gardens.

All in all it’s a great step forward and I’m proud of the part of Liberal Democrats in pressuring the council to make it happen.