Confused press reports

NDP press reports sow confusion
April 17, 2017:
It’s an unfortunate coincidence that three ballots are being held in Bookham on the same day, May 4:

• The election of a Surrey County Council concillor for Bookham and Fetcham West;
• A referendum on the Neighbourhood Development Plan (NDP) drawn up over the last five years by local residents;
• And the advisory poll about whether to set up a Village Council 

Letters to the local press have mixed up the second two, saying that adopting the NDP will increase council tax.
This is nonsense. The two NDP and Village Council issues are entirely unconnected. The NDP does no more or less than turn the work of the Bookham Vanguard Forum, which drew up the plan, into formal, enforceable planning policy.  It attempts to give priority, for example, to affordable, smaller housing in the middle of the village over the four and five bedroom palaces that we have too many of.
Whatever your views about the Village Council, please vote in favour of the NDP, to which BRA committee members made an important contribution.
But remember too that the NDP has only a few years’ life. When it expires, in a decade or so, planning policy reverts to Mole Valley…
…unless we have a Village Council to take over local planning here in Bookham. And, for good measure, to take over the estimated £65,000 a year or more that will come in from local developers. Without a Village Council, Mole Valley gets control of that too.
Mole Valley may spend that money in the Bookham area, but not necessarily on the things you want.
USE YOUR VOTE to say

‘YES’ to the NDP ON MAY 4.