Froghole Farm Consultation - Parish Council Response

Chevening Parish Council objects to the development at Froghole Farm. The Council believes the Green Belt should be protected at all costs and the case for "exceptional circumstances" with regard to Froghole Farm is completely unproven.

• ·An additional 30 houses is a massive overdevelopment of the site and places unacceptable strain on the infrastructure of Chipstead village

• ·The site would introduce further increased risk of flooding to the houses at the south end of Chevening Road

• ·The proposal is to reduce the existing hedgerow in the front of the development which is 0.6m high - this would render the development completely visible to the whole of the village.

• ·Chevening Road is effectively a single lane road given the number of parked cars along its length and it is gridlocked during school drop off and pick up and for Saturday morning football. Adding a further (minimum 62 cars) into this road is completely impractical

• ·The introduction of a pedestrian crossing would remove parking from the road and therefore limited benefit would be derived in terms of additional parking

• ·The Primary School admissions policy means that local children often do not get places at the school. This would be true for any Primary School children living at the development. They would simply add to the gridlock at school times.

• ·There is a fantastic and well used play area at the Recreation Ground (100m down Chevening Road). The Community does not need another facility. No information has been provided as to who would be responsible for the ongoing annual inspection costs and replacement of the proposed play equipment when it became outdated or dangerous and maintenance of the car park.

• ·There is parking in Chipstead Recreation Ground and Sailing Club Road which is available now for Chevening School drop off and collection. Having cars drive up to Froghole Farm rather than use the existing parking areas will make the traffic chaos worse not better.

Chevening Parish Council does not object to Planning Applications as a matter of course. We take the view that as long as the proposal is good for the owners and not detrimental to the villages and other residents we do not object. This is evidenced by the fact that since the start of 2015 we have objected to 26 out of 247 planning applications we have been consulted on.