At a Glance
- What’s happening: Send Parish Council is bringing a second Judicial Review against Guildford Borough Council over 94 Potters Lane. The first challenge (application 22/P/01966) won on every ground in January 2025, quashing planning permission for five houses next to the River Wey Conservation Area. While that case was still live, the same developer resubmitted a near-identical scheme (24/P/01457), and Guildford approved it again in March 2025, ignoring over 40 objections.
- What’s next: The High Court hearing for this second challenge is set for 15 October 2026.
- Who it’s against: Send Parish Council versus Guildford Borough Council, never the developer. This is about holding the council to its own policies, not fighting individual homes.
- What’s needed: £12,500 to cover barristers’ fees and court costs, roughly what 500 residents giving £25 each would raise. You can donate by bank transfer (Account 20384191, Sort Code 60-83-01, reference “Send Planning Appeals Fund”), by cheque to Send Parish Office, or by scanning the QR code on the printed flyer.
- Why it’s bigger than one site: In July 2026, Guildford approved another 140-home scheme at Alderton’s Farm despite unresolved Green Belt and infrastructure concerns. Since 2019, Send has already absorbed 843 approved homes, nearly 8% of the whole borough’s housing supply in one village. National planning rules have also just been relaxed, making it harder for councils to resist speculative development and easier for ministers to overrule local decisions.
- The stakes: If Guildford is never held to account for cutting corners, it will keep happening, at Potters Lane, at future sites, and across other areas of planning policy in Send.
Why We Need Your Support
As a village, Send is facing ever-increasing threats to its green spaces amid speculative overdevelopment on every side. We rely on Guildford Borough Council’s planning team and committee to robustly resist unsustainable development wherever it occurs.
This robust defence can only be mounted within the parameters of national planning policy, but there are equally weighted, locally applicable policies that must also be recognised and applied. When those local policies are disregarded or overlooked, our village is immediately made more vulnerable to inappropriate development, and right now that principle is being tested at 94 Potters Lane for the second time.
Round One: A Landmark Win at the High Court
For the last few years, Send Parish Council has been challenging Guildford Borough Council, through the only legal route available to it, Judicial Review, over the council’s failure to properly consider the Conservation Area of the River Wey Corridor when approving development at 94 Potters Lane, Send.
The site sits roughly 130 metres from the River Wey Navigation Conservation Area, within the setting of the Wey and Godalming Navigations Conservation Area and the Potters Lane and Fishing Lakes Character Area. In January 2024, Guildford’s planning committee approved a scheme for five large detached homes at the site (application 22/P/01966), despite the council’s own Design & Conservation Officer objecting and identifying “harm” to the setting. Send Parish Council took the borough council to the High Court, arguing that the committee had not been given the full and accurate picture when it voted, and that the decision failed to properly apply Local Plan Policy D13, which protects the River Wey corridor.
Residents donated, and the case succeeded on every ground. On 3 December 2024, Deputy High Court Judge Dan Kolinsky KC granted permission to proceed on all three grounds of the Parish Council’s challenge. Guildford Borough Council conceded, and on 13 January 2025 a Consent Order quashed planning permission 22/P/01966, with the court also ordering Guildford to pay Send Parish Council’s legal costs, including an interim payment of £10,000. It was a genuine landmark, confirming that the council itself, not just the developer, must be held accountable for following its own adopted policies.
Round Two: The Same Scheme, Approved Again
While that first case was still live, the same developer resubmitted a near-identical scheme for the site (application 24/P/01457). Guildford Borough Council approved it again in March 2025, this time ignoring over 40 letters of objection, on a split committee vote of 7 in favour, 5 against, and 3 abstentions.
Send Parish Council has now been granted permission to challenge this second approval at the High Court, with a hearing date set for 15 October 2026. This is the immediate priority of the Send Planning Appeals Fund: a second Judicial Review of the same site, against the same pattern of decision-making, within little more than a year of the first.
These cases are Send Parish Council versus Guildford Borough Council, never against the developer. This is not a fight over one relatively small scheme of five houses on its individual merits. It is about ensuring that when planning committee members vote, they are given complete, transparent and accurate information so they can reach a properly informed judgment, and that policy the council has already agreed is actually followed.
Not an Isolated Case: Alderton’s Farm
Send does not have to look far for a second example of the same pattern playing out in real time. On 22 July 2026, Guildford’s Planning Committee considered an application for 140 dwellings on Green Belt land at Alderton’s Farm, Send Marsh. Send Parish Council spoke against the scheme, setting out that the officer’s report had not properly demonstrated compliance with national Green Belt tests. It relied on two bus services to justify calling the site a “sustainable location”, despite the nearest railway station being over four kilometres away, and it could not lawfully secure the primary and secondary school contributions that Surrey County Council said were necessary. The council’s own Design and Conservation Officer had separately warned that the scheme would harm a scheduled monument and the surrounding rural setting.
Despite these unresolved concerns, and despite councillors openly acknowledging that Send is already suffering from overdevelopment and lacks the infrastructure to support further growth, the application was approved by eight votes to one, with two abstentions. Members said they felt unable to refuse after being warned by officers about the cost risk of a developer appeal, the same dynamic in reverse to the one now driving the Potters Lane litigation. It shows precisely why the Fund cannot be a one-off. Sites are coming forward in Send faster than any single legal challenge can keep up with, and the pressure on committees to wave schemes through, right or wrong, is only growing.
Why This Matters Beyond One Site
Planning committees are frequently warned that refusing an application risks the cost of a developer appeal. But approving one unlawfully carries its own risk, that of residents and parish councils taking Judicial Review, and winning, as Send already has once. If Guildford Borough Council is able to proceed without due process and is never held to account, that failure will spread, not only into other parts of the village but into other areas of planning policy too. This challenge is about making sure planning committees are given the facts and that policy is followed, for every village, not just Send.
A New and Urgent Threat: National Planning Reform
The stakes for Send have risen sharply since the government’s overhaul of the National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF), which took effect in December 2024. The reforms restored mandatory local housing targets and raised England’s combined annual housing target to around 370,000 homes, up from the previous advisory figure of roughly 300,000. They also introduced a new “grey belt” land classification, covering Green Belt land judged to make only a “limited contribution” to Green Belt purposes, which can now be released for development under a presumption in favour, subject to “golden rules” on affordable housing and infrastructure.
The practical effect for Guildford has been dramatic. Under the government’s new standard method, the borough’s local housing need has jumped from 562 homes a year under the existing Local Plan to 1,168 homes a year, more than double. Guildford has confirmed that, as a result, it can no longer demonstrate a five-year supply of deliverable housing land, and that “not having a five-year housing land supply makes it much more difficult to resist speculative development.” This shortfall triggers the “tilted balance” in national policy, meaning planning permission must now be granted for more schemes unless the harm they cause “significantly and demonstrably” outweighs the benefits, a much lower bar for developers to clear and a much harder one for councils and communities to resist.
Two further changes add to the risk for villages like Send. From 11 May 2026, councils must consult the Secretary of State before refusing any application for 150 or more homes, triggering a minimum 21-day pause during which ministers can “call in” the decision for themselves, reducing local control over exactly the scale of scheme most likely to affect Send. Then, from 31 October 2026, a new National Scheme of Delegation will take most minor and many major applications away from elected planning committees altogether, handing them to planning officers by default; committees will only keep a say on larger schemes where a strict “gateway test” is met. Taken together, these changes make it more important than ever that when a decision does reach committee, or is challenged afterwards, it is made properly and can be defended on the facts.
A Village Already Carrying More Than Its Share
Send’s exposure to this new wave of pressure is not theoretical. It follows a well-documented pattern. Send Parish Council chair Julia Osborn has set out that, since Guildford’s current Local Plan was adopted in 2019, 843 dwellings have been approved in Send alone, nearly 8% of the entire Local Plan’s housing supply, delivered in a single village. Under the Local Plan’s own sustainability appraisal, villages sit at the bottom of the settlement hierarchy and were meant to account for only around 5% of total housing supply across the whole plan period, a threshold Send has already been pushed well past, largely through “windfall” applications on sites that were never allocated, made possible after Send was removed from the Green Belt in the 2019 plan. Much of this growth has also arrived without the road and infrastructure improvements, such as new slip roads at Burnt Common, that were originally promised alongside it.
Guildford is now preparing an entirely new Local Plan, with formal preparation beginning in June 2026 and a new plan expected within roughly 30 months. That process will decide what happens next in Send. Given Send’s history of absorbing far more than its fair share of housing under the last plan, and given the government’s new, much higher borough-wide housing figure, there is every reason to expect the pressure on the village to continue. The Parish Council will need to scrutinise the new plan closely as it develops.
Set against that backdrop, sites such as Potters Lane and Alderton’s Farm are not one-off skirmishes. They are the leading edge of a much longer effort to keep Guildford Borough Council honest about the policies it has adopted, and to make sure Send’s fair share of scrutiny does not disappear along with its fair share of protection.
What the Fund Is For, and What We’re Raising Now
The Send Planning Appeals Fund gives the Parish Council the financial means to challenge Guildford Borough Council whenever due process is not properly followed, at Potters Lane and at future sites across the village. Its immediate priority is funding the barristers’ fees and High Court costs for the second Judicial Review of application 24/P/01457, ahead of the hearing on 15 October 2026.
The current fundraising target is £12,500, the equivalent of 500 residents each giving £25. Donations can be made by bank transfer to Send Parish Council (account 20384191, sort code 60-83-01, reference “Send Planning Appeals Fund”), by cheque payable to Send Parish Council and sent to Send Parish Office, 28 Send Road, Send, Woking, GU23 7ET, or via the QR code on the printed flyer.
In terms of public spending, the Parish Council does not take this lightly. It is acutely aware that Judicial Review is, in effect, ultimately paid for by the public one way or another. If the Parish Council loses, funds from its own budget must reimburse the winning party; if Guildford Borough Council loses, funds come from the public purse. On top of legal costs recovered or owed, additional fundraising from residents is needed to top up the funds required to bring these challenges in the first place.
The wider cost of allowing the planning system to function without due process and fair, transparent procedure is not only financial. It carries huge implications for Send’s ability to remain the sustainable village it is today. The Parish Council has come this far in defending the village’s interests, and to stop now would send a clear message that Send is fair game for its protective planning policies to be ignored, at exactly the moment national policy changes make that protection more important than ever. Even if this second challenge does not succeed, funding it sends a clear message that residents are willing to keep challenging the continuous granting of planning permission in Send.
Every contribution to the Send Planning Appeals Fund helps ensure that, whether the next challenge concerns Potters Lane, Alderton’s Farm, Garlick’s Arch, or a site not yet on anyone’s radar, Send Parish Council has the resources to insist that Guildford Borough Council gets the process right.
HOW CAN YOU HELP?
DONATE.
If you would like to support, please donate to Send Parish Council:
Account: 20384191
Sort Code: 60 83 01
Account name: Send Parish Council
Bank: Unity Trust Bank
Please reference: “Send Planning Appeals Fund”.
Alternatively, cheques can be made payable to ‘Send Parish Council’ and posted or delivered to the Parish office, 28 Send Road Send Woking GU23 7ET
Go Fund Me: https://www.gofundme.com/f/send-planning-appeals-fund-rhbyc
Please note: Donations will not be refundable unless requested at the time of donating, in writing to the Clerk.
The Parish Council reserves its right to assess all applications independently.