In the 2022 borough council elections, a Mayford-based green belt protestor stood for the Liberal Democrats. Many residents believed that, if elected, he would prevent building work in a field previously designated as green belt. When asked about this Green Party activists had to tell local residents that stopping the building work was unrealistic.
The reason it was unrealistic was that the government, then run by the Conservatives, had instructed Woking to increase housing stock by 10%. Woking Borough Council did challenge this target in court on the grounds that it was impossible to do so while keeping the town’s character the same. This was successful and Woking’s target was reduced by around a third… but the target was still huge as the last 10 years of building work have shown.
These Lib Dems, who lead people to believe that they could stop development, were giving hope in a situation where they would almost certainly let people down. In the 2022 elections the Lib Dems won that seat and took control of the council. Shortly after this construction work started in the field people thought would be saved.
Voters were let down.
Now that the old wave of building work has been completed the government has set new targets and Woking is, once again, obliged to build. The old legal tactic is unlikely to be effective, because Woking can’t say that big tower blocks are out of character. There is also a new land designation, “grey belt”, that the government has made to get around laws protecting the green belt.
As the Lib Dems are speaking out against proposals for new developments planned around Woking, some of which target green belt land, residents should keep the limits of the council’s power in mind. They have to work with what space there is in Woking, but the town is a relatively small place so there are limited options for building work. It is all but certain that the council will end up giving the go ahead to some combination of more tower blocks, knocking down houses to build higher density housing or turning green belt land into grey belt so that it can be developed.
Faced with that list of unpopular options it isn’t a surprise that the constraints the council has to work with haven’t been made clear to people. If the Liberal Democrats are going to move on from being a party that makes misleads residents they have to be honest about the issues Woking faces.
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