Woking Borough Council
Public area in front of the old Blockbusters store on Guildford Road
At tonight’s meeting of Full Council I asked what officers were doing to keep tidy the public area in front of the old Blockbuster video store on the junction between Guildford Road and Station Approach. This abandoned shop front is now an eyesore, with cars often parked inconsiderately across the pavement and rubbish left strewn outside the premises.
In response to my request, the council has said that it has been in touch with Curchod & Co, the estate agents who are marketing the premises, and asked that an effective management regime is put in place. There is some confidence that the store will be occupied again soon, which should resolve the issue more permanently. The council has also instructed Serco to assist with litter picking in the interim. I was also told that any vehicles parked across the public highway will receive enforcement action as part of the council’s normal parking patrols.
Pothole Repairs
One of the most frequent issues that people raise with me is the number of potholes in Woking and the state of our roads, despite the fact that highway maintenance is not a responsibility of Woking Borough Council. Unfortunately there are many demands for pothole repairs and resurfacing in and around Woking, and it is always a fight to secure budget for any necessary work and to push certain roads up the list of priorities.
My colleagues on Surrey County Council have sought to put a stronger focus on the need to invest in our roads and highways. In 2013, the Conservative administration agreed ‘Project Horizon’, an ambitious five year programme with £200m of funding to address the root causes of road disrepair across Surrey. Alongside this, central government recently announced a further £50m in grant funding to local authorities to tackle potholes, with £1m of this allocated to Surrey.
Locally in Woking, our Conservative County Councillor Liz Bowes and I have been successful in securing the resurfacing of particularly troublesome roads in recent years, including East Hill, Pembroke Road and Onslow Crescent. My fellow ward councillor, Cllr David Bittleston and I are diligent and proactive in reporting potholes to the highways authority, but we need residents’ assistance to flag these up, since the council is unlikely to take any action if it doesn’t have the data or evidence to show that a particular road is causing problems.
I would therefore encourage anyone who is concerned with the state of their road to report any potholes online here, and to contact me directly, since the more representations I receive the easier it will be for me to make the case to Surrey County Council for remedial or repair work.
Planning application at Bylands
Earlier today I went to see residents at Bylands, just off White Rose Lane, who have contacted me about a planning application to demolish one of the properties in the cul-de-sac and replace it with a much larger building. In particular, there are concerns that the bigger height of the proposed development will have an overbearing impact on both neighbouring houses, and that the increased footprint will have a detrimental impact on the street scene by bringing the property much closer to the front boundary than other homes in this area.
I have submitted a formal objection to the planning officers asking that they look again at this application and work with the developer to come up with an option which would be much more in keeping with the general surroundings of Bylands. Should officers be minded to recommend acceptance, I would be happy to call this to the planning committee for further discussion so my colleagues may test the weight of these objections against local and national planning guidelines.
Speeding on Oriental Road
At a meeting of the Joint Committee between Woking Borough Council and Surrey County Council last night, officers were asked by local resident Marianne Meinke whether it would be possible to carry out speed monitoring along Oriental Road.
There are some specific challenges regarding parking and speeding at Oriental Road, with the street being very congested both at the bottom end near Woking station, and at the top end by the entrance to the Shah Jahan mosque and the Lion Retail Park. Due to the large number of cars which park on the pavement near the mosque, pedestrians often have to walk on the road at this point, while the lack of a crossing or design features means that vehicles can travel quite fast along the middle stretch of road. This is particularly dangerous given how narrow the pavement is, and the fact that this route is used by schoolchildren and those walking into town.
Through the Joint Committee my Conservative colleagues and I have been able to deliver traffic calming measures in places like Park Road and Old Woking Road, and I successfully pressed for the County Council to commit to feasibility studies for speed restrictions on Mount Hermon Road, East Hill and Maybury Hill in the next financial year. Oriental Road is already being monitored through the council’s Speed Management Plan, while the Joint Committee’s work programme contains a proposal to try and alleviate problems with speeding traffic.
Should I be re-elected in May then I will continue to press both the county and borough authorities to commit resources and do more to tackle problem areas on roads leading into and out of the town centre.