Foreword by Tim Wall, Chair of Albury Parish Neighbourhood Plan Steering Group
The Steering Group set out to identify how our Neighbourhood Plan could deliver a vision of Albury Parish in 15 years with policies designed to support this vision:
“Albury Parish has grown successfully as a sustainable community whilst protecting the openness and permanence of the Green Belt. The parish has retained its special historic and landscape qualities. New affordable housing, rural economic growth and community facilities meet local needs and have been well designed to address climate change. The character of settlements, landscape, habitats, species, and views throughout the parish have been preserved. The Albury Village Conservation Area and tourist facilities have been enhanced.
Advances in broadband and sustainable energy have made a positive contribution to the growth of rural businesses and enabled more residents to work locally or from home leading to a more sustainable footprint.
Traffic management and parking have improved both safety, pollution and quality of life for residents and visitors, without detriment to the area’s special qualities. Whilst change in the wider area has been significant, it has provided opportunities for improved connectivity to services beyond the parish”.
Albury Parish is set entirely in the Green Belt, Surrey Hills National Landscape (formerly AONB) and Area of Great Landscape Value and was not “inset” from the Green Belt in the Guildford Borough Local Plan 2019. This offers some protection for natural landscape, and biodiversity but, places constraints on rural economic growth and the need for affordable housing. Our Housing Needs Surveys 2018 and 2024 indicated a housing stock profile skewed to larger properties with the cost of market housing in the parish a significant barrier to young people, families and those on lower incomes. Both surveys identified the need for affordable properties1. If this goes unmet an unbalanced community with an ageing demographic profile poses a threat to our much-valued community facilities, which is prevalent in similar areas of south-east England. New housing needs are being addressed in Guildford Borough though affordable housing remains in short supply.
Visitors are directed to Albury Parish to enjoy its rural and historic landscape for recreation. Whilst this offers welcome support for rural business it creates problems for the parish which faces a growing influx of tourists, cyclists, commuters and traffic, posing threats to the landscape, habitats and species, with rural roads congested and unsafe. Land use exploitation exacerbates this. The policies laid out in our Neighbourhood Plan set out to address these issues and thus deliver our “vision”.
This Neighbourhood Plan cannot provide direction outside the remit of planning policy, even where issues are identified by the community as of importance. However, we recommend they are addressed separately by the Parish Council. These are laid out on page 89.
I would like to thank all parishioners who engaged with the development of our Neighbourhood Plan, The Albury Estate and landowners, our Planning Consultant James Garside and in particular the past and present members of our Neighbourhood Plan Steering Group who have remained committed to the project during its development and who devoted so much of their own time to help achieve it. In particular I’d like to thank Sandra Dennis, Stu Bevan, John Brockwell, Peter Gellatly, Fran Breslin, Sally Blake, and Andi McCann all of whom have contributed significantly to deliver this project since its inception in 2018.
Tim Wall
Chair Albury Parish Neighbourhood Plan Steering Group.
Albury Parish Housing Needs Survey 2024 - APPENDIX J↩︎