Cranleigh Chamber of Trade said on behalf of traders, well, perhaps only, some traders – that they wanted more footfall, so asked their borough councillors please, please, please keep giving consent for more homes and some of them – did!
Over 1,500 in the bag and plenty more to come!
Now, according to the Waverley Web’s Cranleigh followers – the HGV movements thundering through the village are now outdone by UK Power Networks’ vehicles, cones/barriers and traffic lights clogging up the high street. Now, some traders, are upset that the works set to continue throughout August are badly affecting their businesses. Some say they have lost more than 80% of their normal trade, others scythe place is dead. Motorists are avoiding Cranleigh new town like the plague, saying it is practically useless trying to get from A to B. It can take as long as 30 minutes to travel the length of the high street and it’s quicker to travel to `Horsham. UKPN says work should be completed early in September – earlier if possible.
However, yesterday, matters were made even worse when there was a massive power failure and several thousand homes were without electricity. Oh my! and the real building work to create the New Town hasn’t even started yet! The power cut affected postcodes GU6, GU7, GU8, and RH 12 and RH 3. However, Cranleigh High Street was seemingly unaffected.
Still you can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs, so they say, and an engineer told one passer-by. “Think yourselves lucky we are here on this job, if we hadn’t Cranleigh would have been blacked out by Christmas.” UK Power network are now investigating the high voltage overhead electricity line fault which caused the cuts which affected 1,223 of its customers.
It never rains but it pours, so they say!
This week earth movers moved onto the Berkeley homes site in Knowle Lane which will be closed to all traffic later next week.