The County Council has confirmed that the car park charges introduced last year at the Norbury Park car parks have resulted in substantially fewer vehicles being parked in the car parks than anticipated.

In response to Liberal Democrat questioning, the Cabinet Member responsible for the car parks stated that the business plan assumes that 35,075 cars would park in for the Fetcham Roundabout Car Park but that only 5,057 vehicles had parked in the car park in the period October to December 2018.

He then sought to justify this shortfall in anticipated usage as being “caused by regular users choosing to park elsewhere around Norbury Park and displacement of people who were parking all day in Fetcham Roundabout Car Park.”

The Cabinet Member also admitted that the numbers using the Crabtree Lane car park were not being monitored as no counter had been installed at the car park to record how many visitors are using this car park.

This response clearly shows that the business case and justification for introducing car parking charges at Norbury Park, which was to raise more income to fund countryside maintenance at Norbury Park, was fatally flawed as the expected numbers of vehicles using the car parks is not being achieved.

The reality is that there will not only be little funding available to spend on countryside maintenance but that the money spent on the infrastructure required to levy the charges will not be recovered whilst additional problems have been created with vehicles being parking in nearby streets.

It is clear that this decision was not properly thought through prior to the decision being taken and it is time for the County Council to admit failure and to withdraw the car park charges at Norbury Park.

The Dorking and Cranleigh Tips remain open for the time being whilst their future is further assessed over the summer. After 7 May 2019, however, only recyclable material will be accepted at both Tips.

This includes:

Domestic Batteries, Books, Car Batteries, Cardboard, Cartons, Cooking Oil, Electrical and Electronic Equipment (cookers, fridges and freezers, fluorescent tubes and lightbulbs, small domestic appliances, TV’s and monitors, and washing machines), Foil, Food Tins and Drink Cans, Garden Waste, Gas Bottles, Metals, Mixed Glass, Bottles & Jars, Mixed Paper, Mobile Phones, Printer Cartridges, Spectacles, Tapes and Discs, Textiles, and Used Engine Oil.

The following will no longer be accepted:

Black Bag Waste, Carpets, Furniture, Hard Plastics, Hazardous Waste (Household and Garden Chemicals and Paint), Mattresses, Plastic Wrap and Film, and Wood and Timber.

We will continue the campaign over the summer for the Tips to accept all waste and to re-open seven days a week.

Natural Flood Management (“NFM”) means taking action to manage flood risk by protecting, restoring and emulating the natural regulating function of catchments, rivers, floodplains and coasts and DEFRA have instigated a NFM scheme on the Pipp Brook upstream from Westcott as one of its research projects.

The overarching objectives of the project is to: reduce flood risk; improve habitats and increase biodiversity; and reduce evidence gaps and increase knowledge of NFM interventions. This will be achieved by enhancing the natural processes of slowing the water flow and providing increased flood storage in the upstream section of the catchment. The project will also enhance biodiversity by restoring wet woodland habitat.

The project team has identified several NFM techniques that can be implemented in order to meet the programme and project objectives. These include log and debris dams, offline storage, ephemeral ponds and invasive species removal. These interventions are spread across 20 sites along the upper Pipp Brook and have an estimated cost of £305,000.

The construction activities taking place between 1 August and 30 September 2019.

The County Council has approved the transfer of the Surrey Performing Arts Library to the charity NewSPAL thereby offering an alternative rejuvenated long-term future for SPAL in the charity sector free from the financial and other constraints it faces whilst it is within the County Council.

This success is entirely down to the generous and vocal support from the Friends of SPAL and the many individual and user groups who have been determined to find a better way forward for the Performing arts Library.

NewSPAL and the County Council will now work together to plan for the transfer of the collection to NewSPAL, initially by way of a conditional loan and NewSPAL has to finalise the lease for the library’s new premises in Woking and set up a completely new operating platform independent from the County Council. If all goes well, the move to the new premises will take place in the Autumn of 2019.

We wish NewSPAL all the best and will give it our full support.

The County Council’s Cabinet has decided to postpone the closure of the Dorking Tip until 1 October 2019.

The reprieve came as Hazel Watson, Liberal Democrat County Councillor for the Dorking Hills, formally presented a petition to the Cabinet Meeting calling the Dorking Tip to be kept open for at least 3 days per week, and preferably for 7 days, per week. The petition had been signed by more than 2,000 residents.

However, even with this reprieve, the Dorking Tip will be restricted to only accepting recyclable material and it will still be closed in the Autumn unless a way of operating the Tip can be identified which will allow the County Council to make a similar level of savings to the savings that will be achieved by closing it.

We are pleased that the Dorking Tip has been saved from closure at least for the time being and believe that the petition, signed by more than 2,000 local residents, has sent a strong message to the County Council that the facility is highly valued by the local community.

We are disappointed with the downside of the decision which means that only recyclable materials will be accepted at the Dorking Tip whilst its future is considered as residents who want to dispose of non-recyclable materials will have to go to the Leatherhead Tip. This is too far for many residents in southern Mole Valley to travel and the additional traffic generated by those who go to the Leatherhead Tip will add to the traffic congestion on local roads.

We will continue to lobby the County Council to retain the Dorking Tip on a permanent basis and for the Tip to accept non-recyclable materials so that local residents in southern Mole Valley will continue to have a local tip within a reasonable distance of where they live.

Unfortunately, the threat of closure of the Dorking Tip remains and thus the battle to save the Dorking Tip, and for the Dorking Tip to open seven days a week, will continue whilst the County Council considers its future.

The Dorking Tip is now under real threat of closure by the County Council, with a decision to be made by its Cabinet on 29 January 2019. The recommendation to the Cabinet, following the consultation, is for the Tip to close.

The Liberal Democrats launched a petition which calls on the County Council to keep the Tip open and to open it seven days a week as soon as the County Council announced that it was considering closing the Tip in the Autumn of 2018. It was delivered, with more than 1,200 signatures, to the County Council in early January 2019 and will be formally presented to the County Council’s Cabinet before it makes the final decision.

The Dorking Tip has 1,679 visits per week and deals with 2,813 tonnes of waste. Redirecting all these visits to the Leatherhead Tip will not only inconvenience Dorking residents but will also increase congestion on roads in the Leatherhead area and will result in longer queues at the Leatherhead Tip, longer than the three quarters of an hour that residents are already reporting to us.

As a result, the petition has received fantastic support, not only from residents of Dorking and surrounding villages who use the Dorking Tip, but also from residents in the Leatherhead area.

In responding to the petition, residents have:

• expressed significant shock that the County Council is again consulting over proposals to close the Tip only eighteen months after its last proposals to close the Tip which were overturned after a very high profile campaign backed by many Dorking residents;
• claimed that the closure of the Dorking Tip four days a week after the last consultation resulted in an increase in fly-tipping in the Dorking area and called on the County Council to keep the Tip open to avoid even more fly-tipping; and
• said that if the decision goes ahead they would not take their recyclable items to Leatherhead but would put them in their bins for disposal thereby reducing our recycling rates and increasing the amount of landfill tax that our Councils will have to pay.

Since delivering the petition at County Hall in early January, many more residents have signed the petition, with more residents signing every day. These additional signatures, which brings the total number of signatures up to over 1,800, will be presented to the County Council before the Cabinet meeting”.

With the petition being signed in such significant numbers it is clear that the Dorking Tip is a highly valued local facility as people want to dispose of their waste responsibly at a facility within easy reach of where they live.

We are hoping that the County Council’s Cabinet will listen to all of those residents who have signed the petition as closure of the Dorking Tip would be detrimental to local residents in Mole Valley and to the environment.

In the week that Chancellor Philip Hammond MP announced, in his budget, that ‘Austerity is Over’, the Conservatives on Surrey County Council firmly disagreed with him and proclaimed that ‘Austerity is not over’.

This disagreement stems from the huge financial pressures facing the County Council: the number of residents needing support – whether it is for learning disabilities or elderly care – is rising. For instance, Surrey already has more than 93,000 residents aged over 65 who can’t manage a domestic task on their own and it is expected that this will rise by 36 per cent by 2030.

But instead of arguing that the County Council needs to be funded from central government to deliver these vital social services – just like the NHS is funded centrally to provide healthcare – our Conservative Councillors are looking to cut a further £85m from other essential services across the county to fund them.

And they have issued a series of public consultations covering:

* Children’s Centres;

* Concessionary bus travel;

* Special Educational Needs and Disabilities;

* Libraries and Cultural Services; and

* Community Recycling Centres

as these services are to bear the brunt of the cuts.

In these so-called ‘consultations’ residents are being asked to choose between one unacceptable alternative and another unacceptable alternative – the choices that residents want to make are nowhere to be seen in the “tick-box” consultation.

The County Council will then use these flawed consultations to justify which unacceptable cuts to make to these services, services which have already been cut to the bone in previous rounds of cuts.

Surrey Liberal Democrats are, however, asking all residents to respond to the consultation – which is open until Friday 4 January 2019 – and to make their views clear not just through the “tick-box” answers but to explain why all the options are unacceptable in the “freeform” comments section.

The consultations can be found at: https://www.surreycc.gov.uk/council-and-democracy/have-your-say/consultation

Make sure your voice is heard!

Mole Valley Liberal Democrats have reacted with dismay to reports Gatwick Airport might convert their emergency runway into a second runway, bypassing controls on airport expansion when a restriction runs out next year and Parliamentary Spokesperson Paul Kennedy has called on Secretary of State Chris Grayling MP to intervene to ensure the change is not slipped in by the back door.

The plans come a week after the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) warned we had just 12 years to prevent a global climate change catastrophe. The plans would involve an increase in air traffic by up to 30%, and potentially more if Gatwick is able to get the runway extended in the future.

There are also concerns that the loss of the emergency runway would endanger the public and exacerbate chaos in the event of an incident.

Liberal Democrats have consistently opposed any additional runways in the South-East – whether at Gatwick, Heathrow or Stansted – citing noise and environmental concerns and the need to rebalance the United Kingdom economy away from the overheated South-East.

Liberal Democrat Parliamentary spokesperson Paul Kennedy said it was crazy for the Conservative Government now to allow expansion of both Heathrow and Gatwick Airports. He said:

“Mole Valley residents are already suffering from changes to Gatwick’s flight paths, and there is concern that most of the additional traffic will fly directly over our towns and villages.

“There must be real questions about the economic and environmental rationale for this change, given the huge amount of Government funding already going into expanding Heathrow. There is no justification for the Conservative Government to allow both Heathrow and Gatwick Airports to start using extra runways.

“Chris Grayling should intervene to ensure full public consideration of the economic, safety, noise and climate change implications of the proposals before any such change can even be considered. Gatwick should not be allowed to subvert the national airport planning framework.”

Parking charges of £1.30 per hour, with a maximum charge of £5.00 per day, were introduced in the car parks on Surrey County Council’s Countryside Estate, including those at Norbury Park, on 6 August 2018 despite significant opposition from local residents. Previously there was no charge.

Following the introduction of the parking charges, the car parks, unsurprisingly, have been virtually empty. Instead, as we predicted, local residents who enjoy walking in the countryside, including those who exercise their dogs, are parking for free on nearby roads or in other car parks which do not have a charge.

This makes a mockery of the County Council’s stated aim to increase income which could be put towards the cost of maintaining or improving the Council’s Countryside Estate.

In addition, with it costing £45,000 to install the ticket machines in Norbury Park and with the estimated income from the Norbury Park car parks being £20,000pa, it will take over two years for the income raised to cover the cost incurred if this level of income is achieved.

The Liberal Democrats believe that these car parking charges have backfired on the Conservative administration at County Hall. Through these charges, the County Council is discouraging rather than encouraging the use of its car parks, is failing to raise sufficient income to cover the costs of the ticket machines, and is not raising additional funding to maintain the Countryside Estate. We believe that these parking charges on the Countryside Estate should be revoked.

The Forestry Commission has notified Europa Oil & Gas that the Minister for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) has decided to not renew the lease for the site and, as a consequence of this decision, Europa Oil and Gas have withdrawn their planning application to drill for oil at this site.

We are delighted and relieved with this decision and the consequent abandonment of the plans to drill for oil at Leith Hill. The proposal was never appropriate in an area of outstanding natural beauty, in an area where the water supplies could have been put at risk, and where it was impossible to develop a realistic traffic management plan for works vehicles to access the site.

It has been a ten year battle to convince those who make the decisions of this and the battle has finally been won. It has been a rollercoaster of a campaign with successes and setbacks along the way. This victory is thanks to the tenacity of the many hardworking and dedicated local residents and campaigners led by the Leith Hill Action Group who have devoted themselves to protecting Leith Hill from this inappropriate development.