Gerald Eve's Planning Application

These are photographs of the development proposed in the outline application for the Holy Cross (The Grange) site. The latest proposal indicates 198 new dwellings plus a care home for 72. It is important that you study this carefully, since it will bear no relation to what will happen if the application is successful. The artist's impression is a concept only, designed to deceive: there are not 198 dwellings shown, far from it, as you can see. This will all change if it gets as far as a full planning application, when they will be within their rights to maximise their profits and apply for 400+ houses on the site. So, please do not be fooled by these misleading pictures.

Some points to consider:

•  Where are all the cars?

•  Where are the garages and parking areas?  How many of each? 

•  Where are the wheelie bins, especially for communal blocks?

•  Where are the children's play facilities?

•  Where are the boundary fences between the properties? 

•  Where are the footpaths between the buildings?

•  Who will maintain the shared open spaces?

•  Which are the ‘affordable’ social rented houses and which are the shared ownership ones?

•  Will the buildings follow any local style, either Chiltern or Chalfont?

•  What and where is the community facility, will it be another church? 

•  Where is the access for the community facility?

•  How do the large blocks, particluarly the care home on the right compare to the size and style of the existing village? Look at the Budgens building at the bottom of the site. Do we really want more buildings of such gargantuan sizes in our village.

What we think

For the following reasons, SENSE4CSP remain fundamentally opposed to this plan and the Draft Core Strategy that clears the way for developments such as this. 

•  No consideration whatsoever has been made made for our massively oversubscribed middle school to relocate. What is the future for our children if we have to find extra education places for a potential 4-500 children?

•  The disproportionate densities being imposed here.

•  Unlike Chesham, Amersham and Little Chalfont, we do not have sufficient transport links to cater for a potential 400+ working(?) individuals.

•  The roads surrounding the site are already congested and literally cannot cope with further traffic.

•  The insensitive nature of the buildings’ proportions in relation to the rest of Chalfont St Peter.

•  They have not sought to preserve the historic and locally important Grange Manor for the future of the village.

•  We have no entertainment facilites in the village centre for an increased population, we already suffer from a serious youth problem in the village.

•  The village is already awash with care homes. We want individual homes for old people so that they can retain their indipendence and dignity.

 • There is no local employment for a migration of this size into the village.

This application is being encouraged by CDC under their supposed emergent Draft Core Strategy, even though this has now been made null by the Secretary of State's recent directives to cancel the Regional Spatial Strategies.

We accept that some development must and will happen, but this is unprecedented in the area and wholly out of balance with the rest of the district, it would unnecessarily ruin the amenity of our village.