Half of online respondents backed 2,250 homes at Redhill Aerodrome and 34.6% opposed. Around 600 email and paper responses are still to be counted.

Exactly half of the people who answered Tandridge District Council’s Local Plan survey supported building at Redhill Aerodrome, and 34.6% opposed it. The figures went to the council’s Planning Policy Committee on Thursday 17 September.

The aerodrome is the largest site in play, at around 2,250 homes on 236 hectares of Green Belt. It sits in Nutfield parish, inside Tandridge, but its western edge runs up towards Redhill, and a good number of the people who will live with it are on this side of the boundary.

The numbers below come from the Local Plan Update report put before that committee. Officers are clear that they are preliminary.

What the committee was told

The consultation ran from 6 July to 2 September. The report records:

  • 1,947 responses through the online consultation platform
  • of those, 984 were completed and 963 were partial
  • 5,185 people visited the survey
  • around 600 further responses arrived by email and on paper

The email and paper responses had not been analysed when the report was written. Officers say the findings “should be regarded as preliminary pending completion of the full consultation analysis”. Every percentage in this article is therefore from the online survey alone, and could move.

The aerodrome question

Question 6 asked directly whether respondents supported a strategic development site at Redhill Aerodrome. The answers split almost in half.

Bar chart of answers to question 6 on Redhill Aerodrome: strongly support 28.9%, support 21.1%, neutral 15.4%, oppose 6.7%, strongly oppose 27.9%

Support came to exactly 50.0%, made up of 28.9% who strongly supported the proposal and 21.1% who supported it. Opposition came to 34.6%. A further 15.4% were neutral.

The interesting part is where the strength of feeling sits. Only 6.7% picked the soft “oppose” option. Almost all of the opposition, 27.9 points of the 34.6, was “strongly oppose”. Officers described the result as support outweighing opposition while also generating “strong opposition from some residents and stakeholders”.

The report also records that the aerodrome “received the highest level of support of any site consulted on”, and that it was the site people mentioned most often in their written comments, on both sides of the argument.

What people said they were worried about

Question 7 asked about concerns. Respondents could pick more than one:

  • traffic and transport, 59.8%
  • impact on the Green Belt and environment, 57.4%
  • pressure on local services such as schools and healthcare, 56.8%
  • the scale of the site, 44.8%
  • whether it could actually be delivered, 31.6%
  • no concerns at all, around 22%

The strategy vote was more fragmented

Tandridge offered four growth options. Options 2 and 4 both include the aerodrome; Options 1 and 3 do not. Option 4 is the council’s preferred strategy.

A total of 1,020 respondents expressed a preference:

Option Includes the aerodrome Share
Option 4 (council’s preferred) Yes 33.4%
Option 2 Yes 22.3%
None of these options n/a 27.6%
Option 1 No under 10%
Option 3 No under 10%

So the preferred option won, but with a third of the vote. More than a quarter of people rejected all four. Taken together, the two options that include the aerodrome drew 55.7%.

The rest of the survey pulls the other way

The same respondents were emphatic about Green Belt and brownfield land. Asked which issues mattered most, nearly 89% chose protecting the Green Belt and countryside. Delivering new homes was picked by 7.7%, and economic growth by 8.1%, the two lowest scores in the question.

On making better use of what is already built, 79.8% backed redeveloping previously developed land and 61.1% backed making better use of existing developed sites. Only 8.9% supported changing settlement boundaries.

On phasing, 69.1% said development should always be phased if supporting infrastructure is not in place. Counting those who answered “sometimes”, nearly 80% wanted infrastructure-led growth.

Two questions exposed how hard the evidence is to follow. On the council’s Grey Belt approach, 41.0% were unsure, 35.2% opposed it and 23.8% supported it. On the site assessment methodology, 50.3% were unsure, 26.8% disagreed and 22.9% agreed.

Why the council is under pressure

A second report to the same meeting explains the bind Tandridge is in. Its Five-Year Supply Update puts the district’s deliverable housing land supply at 2.54 years as at 1 July 2026.

That figure was corrected on the night. An addendum issued for the meeting revised the total supply up from 2,450 homes to 2,498, and the years of supply from 2.49 to 2.54.

The arithmetic is unforgiving:

  • the standard method requires 819 homes a year
  • past under-delivery adds a 20% buffer, taking it to 983 a year
  • the five-year requirement is therefore 4,914 homes
  • identified supply is 2,498
  • the shortfall is 2,416 homes

It is improving. The council reported 1.92 years two years ago and 1.97 years at 1 October 2025. But it is still barely half of what national policy asks for, and officers note that where a council cannot demonstrate a five-year supply, the 2026 National Planning Policy Framework engages the presumption in favour of sustainable development, which “can override development plan policy”. In plain terms, that is how sites get permission on appeal rather than through a plan. A full update at 1 October 2026 is due later this autumn.

One footnote from the same report, because it is the kind of thing that only appears in the small print: the council says it cannot currently demonstrate a five-year supply of plots for Travelling Showpeople, although it does have a surplus of Gypsy and Traveller pitches, 106 against a five-year need of 80.

What happens next

The report asks the committee to note progress rather than to decide anything. Minutes for the 17 September meeting have not been published yet, so the wording of any resolution is not on the record.

On the aerodrome, the direction of travel is set out plainly. Option 4 “provides the basis for preparing the Regulation 19 Local Plan”. Officers add that the focus over the coming months will be on refining that strategy “rather than undertaking a fundamental review of strategic options”. The Regulation 19 plan is intended to come back to committee later this year.

That is not the same as a decision to build. Regulation 19 is the publication draft, which then goes to a planning inspector for examination before the plan can be adopted, and any homes would still need planning permission after that. The council still has transport, infrastructure, Green Belt, flood risk and viability evidence to finish.

One technical point worth knowing. The report says the plan is being progressed “under the legacy arrangements and against the December 2024 NPPF as opposed to the new version published in August 2026”. The plan is being tested against the older rulebook.

What it means for you

If you responded by email or on paper, your response has not been counted yet. Around 600 are still being analysed, and the report says they will feed into the final picture. The figures above may change when they are.

If you want a say on development on this side of the boundary, there is a consultation open now. Reigate & Banstead Borough Council launched the scoping stage of its own Local Plan on 14 September. It runs for six weeks and closes at 5pm on Monday 26 October. You can respond at reigate-banstead.gov.uk/scoping-consultation, by email to planning.policy@reigate-banstead.gov.uk, or on paper at Reigate Town Hall and the libraries in Banstead, Horley, Merstham, Redhill, Reigate and Tattenham Corner.

This is the earlier stage of the two: it asks what the plan should cover and how the council should consult, not where homes should go. Cllr Kate Fairhurst, Executive Member for Place, Planning and Regulatory Services, said the choices made through the process “will have a lasting impact on the borough and its communities”.

If you want to follow the aerodrome itself, the decisions are Tandridge’s, not this borough’s, and they are taken at the Planning Policy Committee. Papers for every meeting are published on the committee’s page, usually about a week beforehand, and meetings are webcast.

Our earlier report set out the site itself, the developer’s infrastructure package, the drainage work proposed on Redhill Brook and the Salfords Stream, and what the aerodrome’s own consultative committee minutes say about its finances: Redhill Aerodrome, the 2,250-home plan explained.

Planning applications in front of Reigate & Banstead are on our Reigate planning applications page, and what borough prices are doing is on our Reigate house prices page.

Sources