Haslemere Town Council

Q&A session with Kirsten Ellis at Haslemere Town Council

How can Councils work together with the community to play their part in protecting the environment?

The first thing Councils can do is listen to their communities. One important way we have done this in Haslemere is by shaping our Neighbourhood Plan to reflect the majority views of our community expressed in public consultation: 89% of whom expressed the wish to protect and conserve our designated countryside – and 65% voted against allowing even small-scale developments building outside the settlement boundary. Therefore, our Neighbourhood Plan proposes a settlement boundary which excludes Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty and Areas of Greater Landscape Value from being concreted over. Also, in response to residents’ views, the Plan recommends that brownfield sites be prioritised, and we welcome higher densities within our town centre, along with smaller, more affordable homes and creative town planning that would help achieve this within our settlement boundary rather than building out into our green spaces and natural wildlife corridors. We are confident that our housing numbers can be fulfilled without the destruction of our town’s environment.

The other obvious challenge is ‘Education.’ Decision-makers -- be they town or borough level Councillors, planning officials or our local elected politicians -- need to be up-to-date with emerging knowledge around biodiversity and environmental protection. The framing of thinking around the value of ‘natural assets’ is beginning to shift, and this can’t happen fast enough. Councils can continue to explore the many ways we can address our very real housing crisis without adding to our emissions and biodiversity loss crisis. There are anticipated policy changes on the horizon with the new Environment Bill and the Planning White Paper that will make preventing and mitigating biodiversity loss an integral part of the planning system.

It’s very worrying that the UK is one of the world’s most nature-depleted countries in the world, but the best way to view that is an incentive to turn things around. Councils like ours can help play an important role by building up partnerships and collaborations with local community groups and volunteers, major stakeholders, NGOs and Local Planning Authorities.

That sounds promising, can you tell us more about that? 

There are great opportunities for us in Haslemere, especially if we see that our long-term economic future and the well-being of our community will be very largely impacted by how we protect our natural environment and biodiversity. We can still enjoy, indeed we are envied for, our beautiful signature countryside environment, and instead of seeing our green spaces as opportunities to concrete over, we can see our nature as valuable for attracting significant business, as well as being fundamental for future tourism and local product branding.

People might like to know that our town has a history of protecting its natural environment and biodiversity. We have strong connections to the National Trust. Sir Robert Hunter, co-founder of the National Trust was first Chairman of our then-parish council of Haslemere. This is the place he picked to be his lifelong home, and from here, led his fight with Octavia Hill and Hardwicke Rawnsley to protect open green spaces from development. Much of the Haslemere area includes some of the earliest National Trust land acquisitions and we are the gateway to the South Downs National Park (recently honoured as the world’s newest ‘international dark sky reserve’). The natural beauty and character of our town was what attracted writers and artists: Tennyson, George Eliot (who wrote Middlemarch here), Arthur Conan Doyle and George Bernard Shaw, and the artist Walter Tyndale. Additionally, we have a history for community-building dating back to the time of the Arts and Crafts movement. It’s a great legacy to build on. 

So how will you protect the natural environment and biodiversity? 

As mentioned, our Neighbourhood Plan, produced in partnership with Haslemere Vision, seeks proactively to avoid damage to our local nature and biodiversity. The Plan includes a policy which seeks to retain, protect and enhance Haslemere’s biodiversity and extend our ecological networks and green infrastructure to assist the migration and transit of wildlife, flora and fauna. Our Plan also recommends adopting the Surrey Wildlife Trust policy guideline of 20% Biodiversity Net Gain for developments and for our town to meet its climate change and biodiversity emergency commitments.

As a Council we are proud to support the first phase of a Biodiversity mapping project to be undertaken by Haslemere Vision, which will map the key areas of biodiversity around our town and the ‘natural corridors’ and ‘stepping stones’ that link them. In Waverley this is a new initiative – only Farnham has also been pursuing a similar approach. In many ways Haslemere is the perfect ‘case study’ as a town which has everything to gain by enhancing and conserving its precious nature – and everything to lose if it were to further deplete and destroy the nature that makes it one of Surrey’s ‘special places.’

The biodiversity mapping project in Haslemere is a great example of what can be achieved by forging partnerships; the group will work with Surrey Wildlife Trust, the National Trust, Campaign for the Protection of Rural England: The Countryside Charity, Lob’s Charity and the Haslemere Society.

Haslemere Town Council is also involved in community partnerships working to improve active and sustainable transport in our town (rail, bicycling, walking) notably the Community Rail Partnership, and promoting the new cycle route off Bunch Lane. In addition to reducing its own carbon footprint, the Council has been actively supporting community efforts to reduce emissions, recycle waste and create a community orchard. We are also looking forward to working with Surrey Hills Enterprises (SHE) on a Sustainable Business Initiative. 

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