PPP…​Pick up a Parking ticket? Or go around in circles?

Over four days since then, between 10.30am and 12.30pm, I have fitted in time for a morning constitutional around nine Farnham car parks, three of them supermarkets.

The six parks that affect the three streets referred to – the Borough, Downing Street and West Street – were, with minor variations between them and the other three, pretty much as she found them, with drivers circling around to find non-existent spaces.

The other three – St James, Riverside 2 and Riverside 3 – have more empty spaces, with Riverside 3 hardly used at all.

It’s too far away. It takes a quarter of an hour to reach the centre of the town on foot, and if you are frail, have a young family or have lots of stuff, park and stride hold no appeal.

Riverside 3 is the one years ago that Cllr Taylor Smith claimed didn’t exist and covered up with expensive turf before unveiling it fully fledged some months later.

It is not that Waverley hasn’t tried, it has just made bad choices, particularly with the outer three, and has no ideas on offer pre-Christmas to compensate for the loss of around 280 spaces in the Dogflud and old cinema sites because of the horrors of East Street.

Why not, for example, open the parts of the site not being worked at the moment, like the old tennis courts and, indeed, the cinema site?

We know by now that imagination, flair and thought for the public are not Waverley’s defining traits, but it would be more than a little welcome if it could at least try.

So as you trail, in increasing pre-Christmas frustration and despair, from one park to another, put the responsibility where it belongs – on our stumbling, fumbling, unimaginative council.

David Wylde,
St James Terrace, Farnham