Full marks to the Cranleigh businesses who won awards for innovation and achievement at Monday night’s CRANLEIGH BIG Awards that were hosted at the “New” Town’s  Arts Centre …

… but a BIG BLACK mark for Surrey County Councillor (and wanna-be-MP) Alan Young.

Our sources within the Chamber – which leaks like a broken chamber pot – tell us the petulant County Councilor was so miffed when he discovered the Cranleigh Chamber had invited Dunsfold Park to sponsor one of the Awards that he tried to black-ball the business park!

When that initiative fell on deaf ears he tried to insist that the Dunsfold Park Rep only be invited along to the second half of the evening – just in time to present their own award!

‘Who the hell does he think he is?’ fumed our source. ‘He put us in the most embarrassing position! Did he really expect us to tell one of our main sponsors they weren’t welcome to attend the first half of the ceremony because some small-minded county councillor had thrown his toys out of the pram! ‘

Apparently so!

But the more interesting question is not who, but why?

What has Councillor Young got against Dunsfold Park? You’d think, given it’s the largest employment site in the Borough and his eulogy in the Awards Programme about the need for a ‘vibrant economy that works for everyone,’ and his claim that ‘our local companies and all who work in them play a vital role in sustaining the country’s economic health,’ that he’d want to be seen to live up to his claim as a  ‘county councillor over there in the East to ensure [he] does all he can to assist [people] in making a success of [their] business.’ In theory, maybe but in practice obviously not! 

Thank God the South West Surrey Conservative Association over here has given him the bum’s rush!

Most county councillors with a huge brownfield site like Dunsfold Park in their borough, brimming with possibilities, would be all over it like a rash but not Councillor Young. Wonder if he told the Horsham constituency that he didn’t actually back businesses/ or anything else for that matter on brownfield sites when he tried to capture its Parliamentary seat. Maybe, they sussed him out  in good time.

Apparently – or so our sources tell us – he has other fish to fry! He’s invested so much time and effort in cosying up to former parish councillors, Jeannette and Stewart Stennett, and Councillors Patricia and Brian Ellis (RIP), in an attempt to bring forward development on Cranleigh’s green fields, that he had no interest in seeing the proposals put forward by Dunsfold Park succeed – quite the opposite, in fact!

One national developer, who attended the ‘Secret Meetings’ – that didn’t remain secret for long thanks to Waverley Web – organised by Young and his cohorts, the Ellises and the Stennetts, said it had ‘NEVER’ before been asked by a Surrey county councillor to work with other developers to get the bulldozers rolling into Cranleigh!

Maybe when the former M16 officer responsible for the dossier on Donald Trump comes out of hiding he could be asked to take a look at Mr Young & Co’s activities in and around Cranleigh …