‘I’ll change Woking skyscraper culture in town centre’, senior councillor vows
Woking’s new cabinet member for planning has vowed to change a “culture of piling them high” in the town centre. Councillor Liam Lyons, made portfolio holder for planning when the Liberal Democrats won a majority on the borough council in May, said skyscrapers popping up in the centre of Woking and towering over the town were making residents uneasy. In a meeting of Woking Borough Council’s executive discussing plans for the centre, he said: “We’ve allowed this culture to exist where developers have been encouraged to pile them high for too long now.
The discomfort that certainly I experienced on the planning committee for two years was palpable.” Woking’s skyline has been transformed with two Victoria Square towers standing at 34 and 32 storeys high and a third tower, home to Hilton Hotel, at 23 storeys. The highest two house over 400 apartments, all rent only, over a quarter of which have been let since they became available in April.
Read more: Rethink on Woking’s ambitious Victoria Arch widening scheme as cost rockets to nearly GBP170m An even taller building could be on the way, after EcoWorld London won planning permission on appeal for more than 900 flats across five blocks on Goldsworth Road – including one 37 storeys high. The new administration cannot block construction of what already has consent, but a draft masterplan agreed at the executive meeting last week (July 14), shows they don’t plan to let the trend of rising heights continue.
Though there is no specific Woking-wide height cap in the document, the highest building proposed for future applications is 14 storeys. These could be sited on the western end of the high street and on Heathside Crescent. Council leader Ann-Marie Barker said: “It’s a great shame that this wasn’t put in place before previous administrations gave developers the free reign to reach for the skies in Woking, but we are doing it now.
I think it’s great that we are hopefully now stopping those huge number of skyscrapers that would have cast a shadow over the town, quite literally in the future.” The masterplan also require dwellings of eight storeys and above to have at least two lifts for fire safety. This follows the highest Goldsworth Road tower being designed with only one staircase, despite standing 17 storeys higher than Surrey Fire and Rescue Service’s farthest reaching fire truck.
Monday (July 25) sees the launch of a 12-week public consultation on the masterplan, which Conservative group leader Councillor Ayesha Azad reminded has been in the making for a year. “It was at the meeting of 15th July actually last year that the executive asked officers to prepare the town centre masterplan so I’m delighted to see the fruition of this document,” she said. “I think I’ve said many times that Woking town centre doesn’t belong to the Conservatives, Liberal Democrats, Labour or anybody, it belongs to every single resident within Woking. So trying to get buy-in and understanding from residents is really the crux of the matter.”
There will be a number of drop-in sessions across various locations with the first planned for Byfleet on Thursday evening (July 28). The document sets out the council’s intentions of how people live, work and play in the town and guides how its planning policies will be put into practice. Woking town centre used to be a largely commercial zone but this has changed as housing has been built there in the last 20 years.
According to the masterplan, the town centre will continue to be the focus for housing development. Woking’s core strategy sets an indicative figure of 2,180 homes there between 2010-2027. And over and above this figure, a GBP95m Homes England grant to replace Victoria Arch requires the council to deliver housing on the Triangle, Poole Road and Concorde/Griffin House and “use its best endeavours” to deliver an additional 10 town centre sites – totalling another 3,304 new dwellings by 2030.
What the masterplan sets out is an intention to provide a mixture of different sizes, with Quadrant Court and Oriental Road for example being more suited to more family housing. Halo Works consultancy, commissioned when putting together the masterplan, found that people with a stake in Woking were concerned about “the absence of any guidelines as to where the tall buildings should be positioned and the seemingly uncoordinated approach”. This was also frustrating for developers, interviewed by Halo Works, who said they “felt they were doing everything right, only to find that they are then thwarted by the decisions of the planning committee”.
Their findings state: “They will be patient as they have invested significantly to get to this stage, but only up to a point. “The reputation of Woking within their industry had taken a hit, and they warned that at some point, if this doesn’t get resolved soon, developers will just walk away and go elsewhere.” Cllr Lyons said the masterplan aimed to remove a “deadlock” caused by a number of “outlandish” planning applications, which had resulted in “either the wrong type of buildings have been approved, often overturned on appeal by the planning inspectorate when our own local planning committee has refused it, or no buildings being built, resulting in a lack of housing including an acute shortfall in affordable homes”. The borough currently cannot provide enough housing and this unmet need is being picked up by Guildford and Waverley.
Deputy council leader Will Forster added: “I think this is a really good document that lowers heights but in a defensible way. “Some tall buildings in some locations is acceptable, but it’s got to be a height cap.” Consultation will run between July 25 and October 16 at www.communityforum.woking.gov.uk. The first roadshows will be held on July 28 at St Mary’s Centre for the Community in Byfleet and August 3 at Parkview, Sheerwater, both 6pm to 8.30pm.
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