Guildford Cathedral housing plan rejected by local authority
Plans submitted to build over 100 homes next to Guildford Cathedral have been rejected by the council.
Vivid Homes, a leading provider of affordable homes in England and Wales, submitted plans to build 124 homes next to the Guildford landmark – of which 54 would have been affordable – but plans were rejected last week by Guildford Borough Council as they believe the project would have severely damaged the surrounding area.
As well as harming the area around the Cathedral, the local authority also blocked the proposal due to the potential damage it could have caused to local heritage.
Overall, the proposals attracted 126 letters of objection, which raised issues over development and the lack of details on a wider masterplan. However, the Cathedral said it was selling land surrounding its Grade II listed site to create an endowment fund to pay for maintenance costs.
However, this plan would have only covered the costs for some of the work over the next five years, the planning committee heard last week.
Originally, planning officers wanted to demolish the existing staff housing and create new homes in a mix of flats and houses.
Cllr, Will Salmon at Guildford Borough Council, said: ‘We’ve been looking at this for a number of years and there’s definitely some improvements made in the application over those years, particularly on issues like sustainability.
‘The percentage of affordable housing is also admirable here.
‘My overall feeling is it would have to be somewhere else. Fundamentally this is not the location for this scheme. My concern is the scale, the whole setting, it’s the openness and semi-wild spaces that you can really appreciate as part of the community, that’s the green collar that we see from all sorts of distances.
‘The parkland provides a very special setting with different short and long views of the Cathedral and it provides a sense of proportion which is really essential for a building as big as the Cathedral and I think a lot of that would be lost with the high density scheme.’
The Grade II listed Cathedral was designed by Sir Edward Maufe and work began at the site in 1936. This was interrupted by the Second World War and eventually finished through a fund-raising campaign.
The Cathedral was consecrated on 17th May, 1971.
Image: Annie Spratt