For Conservation 
For Preservation  
For another Generation  

This is what the Horsell resident had to say ....

I just wanted to let you know that WBC tried to do something similar in Horsell in 2003.
The bowls club approached them for help and the next thing the planning department came up with their super-duper proposal which was going to provide accommodation for the district scouts HQ too!
When I found out what they were proposing, I put up notices around the centre of the village and one of the other residents arranged a public meeting with our ward councillors which I also publicised in the same way and handed out pro forma objection letters to parents at the local school. At the meeting , which 50 residents came to, one of the councillors said something about the limitation on objections under planning regulations and I pointed out that this wasn't a planning matter, it was a local democracy matter because we didn't want it!  WBC backed down completely (they had only consulted the local resident's association beforehand) and a much smaller building is about to be built on the site of the existing buildings.
Your website is excellent but I wonder how many residents even now are aware of what is going to happen and that they can stop it if they don't want it . WBC will come up with another solution when they know that they can't get away with the one they want, so the village won't lose out.
Good luck.

Dear Councillor,
ST JOHNS MEMORIAL HALL, ST JOHNS, WOKING
I attended with an open mind the presentation last Saturday, 15 th March, by the Board of Management of the Memorial Hall in St Johns of their intention to submit for planning permission an application for a new Memorial Hall to be sited on the open recreation ground off St Johns Lye.
My discussions with those on the day identified three significant areas of concern for me, which I drawn to your attention ahead of any submission made; and declare that because of these I will be recording my strong OBJECTION to any such proposal.

Destruction of Green Belt and conservation areas – the site proposed for development is protected by its status of being Green Belt and is within a Conservation Area and within the demise of a Site of Nature Conservation importance. These should be in themselves reasons enough for the plans to be rejected. These categories are created to secure the preservation of areas of natural landscape and prevent over development that destroys the green spaces within our town landscape.
Success of existing facility – the current building with intimate spaces and simple facilities responds to the needs of small local groups and classes that meet. The very lack of complicated and valuable facilities enables average teaching class sizes and small clubs to benefit from affordability, being self supporting, and enables them to be entrusted with keys and have freedom of access to adequate but basic services and utilities.

The current Hall is sited within the busy and peopled bustle of the St Johns village area itself, near to the bus stop and across from the perfectly adequate car park. This is a measure of its very success in the past and is a key element to be considered going forwards. It is essentially not remote and so exposed to the risk of vandalism, thieving and other crime. The old timber clad buildings could be considered beyond economical repair but any redevelopment should be very modest in nature, within the same general footprint and on the same site to capitalise on these elements that promote its current success.

Lack of commercial viability and no substantiated requirement for a larger facility - The groups currently using the Hall represent the tail end of a style of social gathering that is fast becoming out dated and unpopular. Lifestyle choices of modern families and with the pressured of modern restrictions on working with young people mean these types of community facility elsewhere in the neighbourhood are already under-utilised or effectively closed - evidenced in nearby Goldsworth Park and failed sports clubs.

The impact of the information technology revolution, televised sports coverage, extended licensing laws, the popularity of eating out, the ‘fitness culture' and other aspects of social change will guarantee that this is the last generation that seek the activities represented by the current Memorial Hall members and the construction of a large and costly new building will not change social trend. The commercial viability of such development will depend on live-on-site full time caretaking and janitorial services to meet the standards of health and hygiene, licensing restrictions and public safety that are required today.
Notwithstanding these arguments the more remote the facility from the village centre the more vulnerable it becomes and its users more likely to become disenfranchised. The demise of the old Cricket Pavilion and current issues with vandalism and illegal drug dealings on the Lye are raw in local resident's minds.

My neighbours and I have met to discuss this proposed application and agree it does not actually seek to serve the local community. As genuine local residents and local council taxpayers, we insist that any submission of this scheme for Planning Permission is REJECTED .
Please do not hesitate to contact me if it would be useful to meet and/or discuss my observations and allow me to expand on these arguments.
Yours faithfully,

As a 14 year old girl, I find (as do all of my family) the Lye an essential part of the local community. My brother, my sister and I all learned to ride our bikes on the Lye, and regularly enjoy its offerings throughout the year, for everything from walking the dog to playing football, appreciating that it is one of the few remaining areas of common land in Britain. The Lye provides an open and easily accessible recreational land for all local citizens, and I believe that action should be taken to preserve it for families and future generations.

I personally believe that the lye provides a wonderful habitat for local environment, and encourages the life of many different creatures. During the recent snowy weather, the Lye has been full of both children and adults playing and benefiting from the Lye's contribution to the village; the land is used throughout the year for a huge variety of activities and events. I think that building a large hall the Lye would cause a range of disruption to this natural ecosystem. Especially as climate change is becoming an increasingly important issue, I feel that saving this natural area of land is important, and overcoming the hurdle of suggested building would allow other villages and towns in similar situations to follow in St Johns footsteps. 

I am aware that building the new Hall and extending the car-park does have benefits, but these do not out-weigh the negative aspects that would arise from building on the Lye. St John's is a village; and the idea of building such an extensive hall would be both unnecessary and somewhat inappropriate, I feel that other areas of Woking would benefit far more from the building.

There is absolutely no problem with building a new memorial hall, but I believe that this sound be done only in the original area of land, rather than spoiling the Lye, which plays such an important role in the local community. I hope that the council is considerate of the views of local citizens and chooses to build the Memorial Hall in the area that is most suitable, in its initial place.

A local teenager,

I think it is wrong that the field is going to be covered with a new building. i have grown up in st johns and i have learnt to ride a bike there as well. So this proves that  other children may might be able to learn to ride a bike as well there. But if the field is covered with a building that will never happen.

  so why go in all that bother for that hall?? also doing that is not really helping global warming is it? i know that a lot of people i know will agree with me. thank you for your time to read this
This email was sent by a 10 year old girl asking some intersting questions.

            After reading the article in the Woking Informer on March 28 stating the Community Hall on St Johns Lye has been given a cautious welcome I am beginning to wonder if I exist in some form of parallel existence to Woking Councillors and this paper.
The building of a Community Hall on St. Johns Lye is not wanted, will you please listen. This building is being built on common land councillors have been given the trust to manage not hijack It is for people to enjoy, it is meant to be an oasis for wildlife a place to be left alone not turned into another sports theme park that will end up as a white elephant. As for the extension of the car park this is the ultimate slap in the face, can you not supply enough spaces for the commuters at Woking station.
In the same edition it was reported how civilian employees are loosing their jobs in the Surrey Police Force this will mean less police on the beat due to increased paperwork. So who is going to look after our local vandals? The area is a hot spot for them now why add another focus to the area. Yes complaints were down last summer but please even the hardiest of these individuals stayed indoors out of the heavy rain we had. When the sun comes out again so the bottles, used needles, litter and abuse will return to the Lye.
 Why not rebuild the hall on its present site? The use of a timber building is economically possible and using modern technology the new building would last for years.
The use of the Lye in this way is a crime and a loss to the people of Woking . Building this is an act of vandalism in itself.  Councillors are in place to represent the views of all, then please start doing so. Stop ignoring the local taxpayer if this project does finally get local planning permission and goes for Government approval. Then believe me opposition will follow this project all the way

Comment - Most of these emails refer to the loss of the Lye no one has mentioned any flats. In a conversation with Ray Morgan he told me that the liklihood is that the old Hall site (if their plans are passed) would be used for whatever housing would generate the most income to support the project - probably 4 or 6 semi detatched houses. They of course need to apply for planning consent for any development there.
You make a good point about Tennis - there are no plans to build a tennis court.
The proposal is to have 2 Football pitches on the front Lye for under 10 junior football. If cricket fails and football succeeds there would be pressure to have a lot more than 2 pitches on the front Lye.
There is plenty of support for the rebuilding of the Hall on the existing site and many would work hard for that.

• are actively encouraging backfill developments on any area large enough to take new development
• are actively encouraging backfill by demolition of existing (and perfectly good) properties with large back gardens (knock down 3 and build 7 in Robin Hood Road is the formula if anyone is interested with the clever twist that as only 7 houses are built at a time there is no need for affordable housing - never mind that the real plan is to build some 50 new boxes (sorry, houses ) piecemeal but as it is being built in tranches of 7 at at time the council will only look at each tranche of 7 as an individual development)
  
• are actively changing the nature of the canal bank, changing what as once a tranquil pedestrian and horse path only with cyclists being accepted as joint users ( the tow path) into a purpose built cycle track
• are cutting down perfectly healthy trees along the canal bank on the pretext that they are diseased, dying or dangerous - none of which is true
• are gobbling up protected common land to build a white elephant (the replacement for he Memorial Hall) and it will be a white elephant as it purports to be for sporting use when we all know that the only sports now played in the area are pick-up football and the "let's burn the common land to the ground" pastime!
• are proposing to eat into more of OUR common land by doubling the car park - which will be welcome news for the people who park there for the day for their commute into London, but it is certainly not there for people who shop locally to use, just you try parking there during the day!
• have approved a sky-scraper building in Woking against all opposition from other boroughs in the area, so what hope does the man in the street have of any opposition to the councils predetermined destroy Woking / St Johns plans
• have built a perfectly useless umbrella next to Woking station at great cost to the local ratepayer
• have build a "Lightbox" which is as much use as a chocolate teapot for most local organisations who have wanted a performance venue for amateur productions for the last 30 years
• have overspent on refurbishing the car parks in Woking
• candidly care little about local residents as on one occasion when an objection was made to a proposed commercial development in the middle of a residential area (Copse Road) told local residents that "Commercial property is far more financially beneficial to the council and so will take precedence over residential property in any decisions we make"
  
  And did you know that our council is looking for somewhere to build 6,000 properties in our area as Whitehall has said this has to happen to meet the government's housing requirements. Well, I suggest someone tells Whitehall to take a long jump off a short pier. We have had considerable building locally with no supporting infrastructure - see the Brookwood Sanatorium site - loads of houses and where are the new schools, doctors surgeries, playgrounds, nurseries, hospitals, libraries etch to support these? Nowhere is the brief answer.
  
  To put it concisely, this council is out of control, and our local councillors are too Politically Correct and weak to take any stand against it. What we need is a total change in our politics. I previously lived in Runnymede and our councillors used to be the same as this lot - elected because people will vote for anything in a red/blue/yellow scarf, even if it is a stuffed teddy-bear. In our area we decided to act (Englefield Green) and put up Residents and Ratepayers (as it was then) representatives at the local elections as candidates in opposition to the incumbent big party candidates, and they won seats ejecting died-in-the-wool councillors. Where we could not put up a Residents and Ratepayers candidate, we threatened with a one at the next election unless the incumbent did as the local population demanded and not as the Conservatives/ Labour/Liberal party instructed. And it worked and we got what WE wanted. Shall we do the same here? Shall we give our council a bloody nose, because it is all they will understand. And the sooner we do this the better our lives will become totally untenable and we will end up living in a planned and developed slum rather than in what used to be, and could still be, a nice little village.

Comment - I make no apology for the length of this email (7), it is how this Villager feels. It is interesting to note that I have only ever received emails seeking to Save the Lye, and none in direct support of using up Common Land. Yet there is a common positive theme of general support for the Memorial Hall. This view of YES to a Hall on their own site and NO to a Hall on the Lye is probably the most regularly voiced view. Surprising really that no one listens then.