Woking Borough Council
Planning application on Blackness Lane
Residents have expressed some concern about a planning application which has been submitted for nine houses on Blackness Road, off the junction at Guildford Road and Claremont Avenue. This comes on top of previous development at the bottom end of Constitution Hill and a recent successful application for four new properties at the old Peartree Lodge site.
I am opposed to this application on a number of grounds. Blackness Lane serves as a pedestrian entrance to Woking Park and is wholly inappropriate for use as an access road to the potential new houses. The junction onto Guildford Road is also a tricky one with a restricted line of sight and multiple attention points and so is not suitable for use as road access for the new development. More generally, I am concerned that this part of Woking, which is quite far south from the town centre where the bulk of the new houses and flats have been built, is not suitable for this kind of in-fill development.
Some fears have been raised by the Woodlands Community Group that additional development at this location could have land slippage impacts, and they have also drawn attention to a covenant which requires the council to keep the area as parkland. These fall outside the scope of material planning considerations and I would encourage anyone who wishes to object to focus their representations on the impact on traffic flows, loss of amenity and concerns about the suitability of the access road.
As I live in Constitution Hill it would not be appropriate for me to make representations or to speak on this application at committee. I have, however, had lengthy discussions with the Residents’ Association and I understand the other Mount Hermon councillors are aware of residents’ objections and are working to ensure that these issues are fully considered before any decision is taken.
Phoenix Cultural Centre
Last night the Phoenix Cultural Centre presented a petition to Woking Borough Council requesting assistance in securing a suitable location to accommodate a community cultural centre and live music venue. I have been supportive of the work of the Phoenix Cultural Centre for some time and was pleased to have the opportunity to speak in favour of the project during the debate on their petition.
We have a great musical heritage in the town that goes a lot deeper than the often cited Paul Weller, and during the discussion I referenced a number of bands who started out in the borough and have since gone on to better things. As the council has sought to promote Woking’s cultural offering in the past few years, having some form of dedicated live music venue would help establish our reputation as a borough that provides the resources to help nurture the talent and aspiration of our young people. I also believe that supporting efforts to deliver a live music venue in Woking aligns with what the council has been trying to achieve in the town centre by helping to provide more diverse and better quality evening and night time entertainment.
I commend the work that has been put in by Elaine McGinty and everyone else behind the Phoenix Cultural Centre. They have taken this project from an abstract concept to something that has become popular and successful, and they’ve done it with little in the way of resources or financial sponsorship. By demonstrating their commitment over a number of years, they’ve built a strong case to show that the council should work with them to help realise their ambition for a bigger and better premises.
As a result of the petition, the council has agreed to meet with the Phoenix Cultural Centre and help identify a suitable location as well as different ways in which they can obtain the necessary funding.
This a big step forward and means we can finally start to look forward to the day when Woking will have its own live music venue.
Woking Park play area
After consultation with residents, Woking Borough Council will take forward refurbishment of the play area in Woking Park over the next few months. The work begins today and will likely last for several months. The improvements include extending and re-landscaping the play area, fencing off an additional area as a ‘dog free’ zone, and also landscaping the grass verges at the bottom of the ramp to the swimming pool in preparation for the installation of a refreshment kiosk.
Obviously the timing of this work is far from ideal as it coincides with the start of the summer holidays. However, I have been advised that the repairs need to be done during a period when the weather is dry and that delaying until after the summer break would have pushed the work back into the autumn and winter. There is also a safety element to the decision to proceed now, since the retaining structure on the bank of the stream has been off-limits for some time. I am told a large part of the project will involve re-landscaping and reinforcing this side of the riverbank to bring it back into use.
The work should be completed by the week commencing 22nd September and I will be monitoring the situation closely to ensure that this does not over-run and that residents are kept informed in the event of any delays or further disruption.
Overview & Scrutiny Committee
This week councillors voted to approve an amendment to Woking Borough Council’s constitution which removes the requirement that the Overview & Scrutiny Committee should be chaired by an opposition councillor. The Overview & Scrutiny Committee is responsible for examining the effectiveness of the council’s functions and policies. It acts as a forum for debate and discussion on all aspects of the council’s work. It selects its own topics for review and can ‘call in’ decisions by the Executive for further scrutiny.
Previously the chairman of Overview & Scrutiny was nominated by the opposition party on the council, with a councillor from the ruling party acting as vice-chairman. Under the new arrangements, the chairman and the vice-chairman will be elected to their position by all councillors on the committee, regardless of party affiliation.
This change has been strongly resisted by the Liberal Democrats, who have used emotive and intemperate language to suggest that the council is ‘abolishing scrutiny’ or ‘getting rid of democracy’. One Liberal Democrat councillor even likened the council to the apartheid regime in South Africa, which is not only offensive but trivalises the genuine suffering and abuses that occured under minority rule.
While I understand the Liberal Democrats might feel discomforted at no longer being automatically entitled to nominate the chairman of Overview & Scrutiny, I believe their concerns are misguided and that the time is right for the council to make this change. The original requirement that the chairman should be an opposition councillor was written into the constitution at a time when the council was much more finely balanced and when there was a shared Executive between the two main parties. Over the past few years the Liberal Democrats have lost significant ground, going from a high of 18 councillors in 2006 to 11 at the recent local elections. Meanwhile, the council has become more politically diverse with Labour winning a seat in Maybury & Sheerwater and the election of an independent councillor in Byfleet. It is therefore right that the chairman of Overview & Scrutiny should not be restricted to a shrinking pool of councillors from just one party and a much broader range of talent should be considered for the role.
Unfortunately the Overview & Scrutiny Committee in Woking has not always been as effective as we would like. Most of the committee meetings in recent years have involved councillors receiving reports and questioning outside bodies or organisations over which the council has little control. The committee has not taken forward vital work where the knowledge and expertise of councillors could really make a difference in scrutinising areas such as procurement, our financial strategy or the cost of borrowing. Some Liberal Democrat councillors have in the past used the chairmanship of Overview & Scrutiny in an overly party political manner, including one incident in 2012 where an important agenda item was withheld from Conservative councillors before the meeting to prevent us from being able to contribute to the debate.
The new arrangements which have been adopted are not unique to Woking. Almost every other borough in Surrey allows the chairman of Overview & Scrutiny to be elected from any party. Indeed, many Liberal Democrat councils have constitutions which state that their Overview & Scrutiny Committee can be chaired by a councillor from the ruling party. The London Borough of Sutton is a majority Liberal Democrat council and has a Liberal Democrat chairman of Overview & Scrutiny. It is therefore hard to have sympathy with the claims that this is some form of cynical attempt to freeze out the opposition or rein in proper scrutiny or accountability in the decision making process.
I believe that allowing the chairman of Overview & Scrutiny to be elected by the whole committee will give the person chosen for the position a much stronger mandate to hold the Executive to account and ensure that the interests of residents are strongly represented. I am sure that Cllr Saj Hussain will, as the newly elected chairman of the committee, work well with his Liberal Democrat vice-chairman Cllr Denzil Coulson over the year ahead and demostrate that the opposition’s criticism and hysterical claims that democracy has been undermined will be shown to be groundless.