Last night the Epsom & Ewell Planning Committee:

• Approved 74 Bracken Path and 66 High Street, Epsom;
• Refused Land adjacent to 87/89 Amis Avenue and Land north of 2 Burnet Grove;
• Partly approved and partly refused the signs at the Racecourse Hotel;
• Deferred 72/74 Temple Road.

Work on finding a user for Horton Chapel has been held up. The borough council’s legal staff had to be diverted to deal with two problems created by the county council. First they withdrew support for the Children’s Centre and Day Nursery in Hollymoor Lane. Then they delayed a decision on the future of the Mansion in Nonsuch Park for over 15 months, resulting in a lot of extra work. It is now hoped to invite tenders from interested parties later this year.

Figures quoted at the June meeting of Surrey County Council by the Executive Member for Transport, in reply to a Lib Dem question, show that Epsom & Ewell now has by far the worst pavements in Surrey.

The figures quoted are for BVPI 187 - a government defined measure of quality, higher values being worse. For 2007/2008 they are 92% higher for Epsom & Ewell than the Surrey average - and compared with 2005/2006 they got 68% worse in Epsom & Ewell at the same times as getting 45% better in Surrey as a whole. At 31 Epsom & Ewell’s score for 2007/2008 is almost 4 times worse than the best borough of Runnymede which scored 8.

I don’t think the Conservative administration is starving Epsom & Ewell of resources deliberately, they are simply allocating funds using a formula which takes no account of what local needs actually are.

This week we debated Surrey County Council’s 2007 Community Survey, which reveals that:

• Only 3 in 10 respondents believe that they can influence decisions affecting their local area.
• People who feel able to influence decisions are more likely to be satisfied with the way SCC runs things.
• A quarter would like to be more involved in decisions and another quarter said it depended on the issue.
• Less than 1 in 6 had heard of SCC’s Local Committees.

I pointed out that if we are to do anything effective about publicising Local Committees before next June, we need to take action now.

The Tories on the Executive had agreed to provide residents with information on how they can have a say in the local decision making process. Yet they failed to mention Local Committees, despite the Survey revealing that less than one person in six had heard of them.

I proposed that instead the council should promote the work of Local Committees more effectively.

At one time there were Press Officers promoting Local Committees. Now some Local Committees have had to divert money from their allocations just to advertise the dates and venues for their meetings and take “pot luck” on subsequent press coverage.

Yet Local Committees are the best things this Council does to engage and involve local people. SCC ought to build on success, not strangle it by cutting the numbers of meetings.

I added that the PR department should be publicising the outcomes of the meetings, as well as the dates and venues. Of course the Tories voted through an amendment emasculating the whole motion, though it did take a step forward by mentioning Local Committees in passing.

Ironically, on the very same day, the county’s PR department did issue an excellent Press Release about the Runnymede Local Committee – one with no Lib Dem members.

Ever since 17 street lights failed in Hook Road early in January, I have been chasing Surrey County Council to get them repaired. The problem was identified as a cable failure, necessitating 18 new lamp posts.

Promised completion dates came and went. So at the Local Committee on June 9th I demanded a full explanation of the apparent lack of urgency. It seems that the problem is one of Health & Safety. The danger is to the EDF workers struggling to make the necessary electrical connections in the narrow footways, not just from traffic but more from the tangle of other buried services, especially those for telephones and cable TV.

Surrey Highways said that all but 3 of the 18 new lights had now been connected, but the last three required staff from EDF, BT and Virgin to work together under SCC supervision and this could not be arranged before 7th July.

I pointed out that actually 12 street lights were not working, not just the 3 mentioned and promised to supply a detailed list, which I did later that night.

I have subsequently been told that the other 9 have failed for different reasons and will be dealt with separately. Let’s see what happens.

It was revealed at the June Local Committee that the student flats on the old Lintons Lane School site may not be built after all. It seems that the developer is negotiating with Surrey County Council to move the youth centre, either elsewhere on the site or off the site altogether. It is understood that the aim is to build retirement flats.

This follows on earlier news that the youth centre had been deprived of heating. I pointed out that retaining this important Youth facility is included in the current Local Plan and expressed the hope that it will also be protected in the new one.