Waverley has ruled out the supermarket at Haslemere's Fairground car park. Four options now run from 36 homes to 59, or selling the site outright.

The supermarket planned for Haslemere’s Fairground car park has been ruled out, and selling the site is now formally one of the options on the table. Waverley Borough Council told its Overview and Scrutiny Committee on 14 September that it is appraising four alternatives to the £21.4m scheme full Council approved in April 2024.

Haslemere is about ten miles south of Farnham, in the same borough.

Supermarket operators killed the original plan without meaning to. Recent engagement with them showed their requirements “have changed substantially” since the mixed-use scheme was first conceived. They now want at least 3 to 4 hectares. The whole Fairground site is 7,364 square metres, which is 0.74 hectares. It is about a fifth of the minimum. (Waverley Borough Council, Fairground Development Project Update, 14 September 2026)

What it means for you

If you park on the Fairground, nothing changes yet. No decision was taken on 14 September and the report asked for none. The car park stays free and unmarked, with the signage the council put up on 29 June 2026: controlled hours of 8am to 6.30pm Monday to Saturday, a 24 hour maximum on the long stay and four hours on the short stay with no return within four hours. Parking there is not charged for.

What has changed is the range of futures being costed, and one of them is that the council sells up and builds nothing. If you use the Youth Hub, three of the four options move it. The window for anyone to influence this is now, because the business case goes to committee before Waverley ceases to exist on 1 April 2027.

The four options

The council’s consultants are appraising these against the original scheme:

  • Sell the Fairground car park and generate a capital receipt for the General Fund.
  • 59 homes. The Youth Hub moves off site into a new community facility, with public and residential parking.
  • 53 homes. The Youth Hub moves to a new location on the Fairground site itself.
  • 36 homes. The Youth Hub stays exactly where it is, which is what limits the number.

The original scheme, for comparison, was a supermarket plus 32 homes, with the Youth Hub moved off site.

So the Youth Hub is the hinge. Leaving it alone costs the site 23 homes against the best case. The council is blunt about why it is in scope at all: feasibility work found the building is not in the Local Plan or the Haslemere Neighbourhood Plan site allocation, but is “a constraint on maximising development opportunities”. Its relocation was therefore added to the project.

The council is not treating that as a threat to the service. It says providing Youth Hub services is “an equal priority, strategically” for itself, Haslemere Town Council and the community. Conceptual design and viability work has already been done for a new community building at Weydown Road car park, ready to come forward if the Fairground decision goes that way.

Why it stopped: local government reorganisation

The procurement for a development partner was paused, and the reason is the abolition of the council running it.

Government confirmed local government reorganisation in Surrey on 28 October 2025. Before signing consultancy contracts and starting a major procurement, the project director and the section 151 officer checked the stages against the reorganisation timetable. They concluded that the West Surrey shadow authority would be the body approving any development partner award, not Waverley.

That created a specific risk the report spells out: running a full procurement, receiving a viable winning bid, and then having the award refused by an authority that did not write the business case. The consequences would be abortive consultancy costs, possible cost claims from the winning bidder and reputational damage.

The council rejected two other courses. It could have pressed on and ignored reorganisation, which it calls leaving itself exposed. Or it could have held the original scheme back and handed it to West Surrey Council after vesting day, but it is not confident the General Fund borrowing assumptions would match the new authority’s financial strategy.

There is also a residual risk it names without softening: that the project is put on hold because of West Surrey Council’s “appetite to deliver development on difficult sites which may require associated borrowing to deliver”.

The Secretary of State issued a direction under section 24 of the Local Government and Public Involvement in Health Act 2007. It requires Guildford, Runnymede, Surrey Heath and Waverley to get the written consent of the West Surrey Shadow Executive before entering certain contracts or completing certain land disposals. Without that consent, the contract or disposal is void.

The Shadow Executive granted some general consents on 9 June 2026 for routine matters. Anything outside those definitions still needs asking. Because the 14 September report sought no decision, no section 24 question arose this time. The council says the implications will be “fully considered” in the report that does ask for one.

The Surrey (Structural Changes) Order 2026 came into force on 10 March 2026, and Waverley has been under a duty since then to exercise its functions to further the purposes of the Order.

The money

Full Council approved a budget of £21,408,334 in April 2024. It splits into:

  • £10,431,651 of General Fund borrowing
  • £9,714,673 of borrowing against the Housing Revenue Account
  • the remaining £1,262,010 from capital receipts and reserves

No contractual commitments have been entered into for the development partner procurement, so the council says it retains flexibility to reassess.

Two numbers in the risk section explain why the sums no longer work as they did in 2024. Construction costs are approximately 30% higher from the 2020 pandemic to 2025, and rising about 3% this year. Land values have not followed: the report says brownfield development land values have been “flat or weakened” over the same period. Costs up, land down, on a site the council describes as complex.

Those complications are worth knowing, because they are why this site has taken so long. The report lists the London to Portsmouth railway line along one edge, needing noise and vibration work, a separation buffer and Asset Protection Agreements with Network Rail. The ground falls four metres diagonally across the site, more than six in places. The historic use as a clay works means possible contamination. The site sits inside the 5km zone of the Wealden Heaths II Special Protection Area, and near a listed building.

What Haslemere asked for, and what the Local Plan allows

The site is allocated under Local Plan Policy DS07 for at least 20 dwellings as part of a mixed-use development, retaining at least the existing parking capacity unless the need can be disproved.

Every option now being appraised exceeds that housing minimum. The mixed-use part is the problem. The council acknowledges it will be “necessary to carefully evidence the lack of need for other uses if the scheme is solely residential”, and says conversations with the planning authority suggest a residential scheme may now be appropriate, subject to parking being addressed.

The Haslemere Neighbourhood Plan recorded a split community. In its consultation, 44% favoured a new community-focused development on the site and 31% preferred the council’s proposal for a resurfaced pay and display car park. The plan also told Waverley, as landowner, to do nothing that would prejudice future redevelopment.

Parking is the live worry. The car park is estimated to hold 160 cars, roughly 90 long stay off Wey Hill and 70 short stay off St Christophers Road. The report accepts there will “likely be parking displacement and some changes in parking behaviour required for any new scheme”.

One long-running obstacle has gone. Three residual parcels of common land totalling 1,268 square metres survived the 2019 deregistration. Waverley applied in December 2024 to exchange them for 2,911 square metres of replacement land at Sun Brow Wood. The Planning Inspector approved it on 5 December 2025, and there is now no common land inside the development area.

What happens next, and when

The viability work is expected to conclude in autumn or winter 2026. The business case is then updated and goes to Waverley’s Executive, to full Council, and to the West Surrey Shadow Executive for a decision. The council’s own project plan puts the business case update, then report drafting, then Executive and Council decision making, at the end of the programme.

That is a narrow window. Waverley is abolished on vesting day, 1 April 2027.

The committee was asked only to note the report and to make recommendations to the Executive. Minutes of the 14 September meeting had not been published when this was written, so what the committee actually recommended is not yet on the record.

Sources