Proposed High Steet improvements causing a bit of a stir.

Surrey County Council claims it is changing Cranleigh High Street to improve road safety and enhance public spaces. 

But some Cranleigh folk and others who use the town claim that not all proposed measures are popular with residents or traders.

However, the public should go down on bended knees and thank Surrey County Councillor Liz Townsend for having a say because we hear the county authority wanted to do the work without consulting anyone!

WW understands some Cranleigh councillors want to go further, saying tinkering at the edges with high street improvements will not solve gridlocked traffic. They want the high street widened! Ye, Gods, is that the sound we hear of Cranleigh’s famous maple trees being felled!?

One trader told us:

I wondered if this is something you have on your radar WW. Seems like a monumental waste of money to me and the consultation appears to have received no publicity in the local area which feels unacceptable.

The highway authority says the project, which has already been downgraded, will update and enhance some public spaces along Cranleigh’s traffic-clogged High Street. 

Others claim it may improve the town’s coffee culture but will make life harder for the pop-in-shoppers, and traders will ultimately suffer.:

Some of the changes include:

  • Better quality and wider pavements
  • Increased areas for pedestrians to walk, sit and meet
  • New street furniture
  • Installation of a drinking fountain
  • Planting and trees
  • Drainage improvements
  • Junction improvements

The most unpopular proposal to remove the access road fronting  Cranleigh Post Office has already been dumped. Town users yelled a big NO! NO ! to any suggestion that the road be paved and trees planted. The daft suggestion to remove all the bus bays has also been trashed, as there was a massive outcry that stationary buses would block the high street and prevent free-flowing traffic. 

“How the hell are we supposed to carry heavy parcels into the widely used post office when most others are closing locally? said one.

A long walk from the Village Way car park and the cost of parking there brought an avalanche of opposition, with residents asking, 

Do any of these highway wallers actually live,work or shop in the village.”

BTW:  Just for information, it is not the WW that has renamed the village a town. It is the President of Cranleigh Chamber of Trade, aka Mr Chat Controller – Martin Bamford. The Chamber has backed the project from the outset, including wiping out bus bays and on-street parking.

Anyone who disagrees with Mr  President on his local Cranleigh Conversations Facebook page is immediately thrown off, according to one Cranleigh businesswoman who has bitterly opposed some “of the previous ill-thought-out” measures which have now been trashed.

Many say they have opposed the removal of the mini roundabout at the junction of Cranleigh High Street and Horseshoe Lane. Others are asking how much the so-called improvements will cost and whether it would be a better use of taxpayers’ money to resurface “the shocking state of the roads and lanes leading into Cranleigh, rather than lily gilding the high street.

Said an Ellens Green resident: 

Travelling from Rudgwick into Cranleigh now resembles one of the bumper car rides I once enjoyed at Bensons funfair! I started to use the A281 Horsham/Guildford Rd, and enter down Wildwood Lane – even worse – now I shop in Horsham instead and avoid Cranleigh altogether.”

Cranleigh (1)

https://cranleighhighstreet.commonplace.is/proposals/2023-junction-improvements/step1

Cranleigh Railway line back on track?

New bid to open the old Horsham to Guildford Railway line

Campaigners are planning action to re-open the railway line that runs across the Surrey Sussex border through to Cranleigh and  Bramley. It was closed during the Beeching cuts in the 1960s.

The English Regional Transport Association, which also wants to re-open the Horsham to \Shoreham line, has been campaigning for years. 

Both lines have been closed for over 50 years, but much of the original track has survived.

Now, transport association chief Richard Pill has said:

I am convinced there’s an overwhelming need, case and demand for this missing rail link.”

Others would disagree. Former MP for Guildford Anne Milton maintained that opening the line would bring even more new housing developments into the eastern villages, and they would be swamped.

However, her successor, Guildford and Cranleigh MP Angela Richardson, has supported efforts to return the railway to the area.   Her two priorities when she joined the Government were to build a tunnel under Guildford to meet the A3  and open the Horsham to Guildford railway line through Cranleigh.

Mr Pill wants to pull together working groups to collate local knowledge and statistics to strengthen the group’s bid to re-open the line for regular passengers and freight use.

In a letter to members, he urged them to encourage more local people ‘with a wealth of local knowledge to join the association, get involved in the campaign and voluntarily assist with various tasks.

Last year, campaigners thought they had lost their battle to re-open the defunct track when Waverley Borough Council granted planning consent for the Wey and Arun Canal Trust to continue its Lost Route to the Sea – by building a new link near Bramley, which includes part of the old railway line.

However, the rail buffs were later given fresh hope when they were told there would be a re-run of the planning application, giving them another opportunity to call for support for the rail option. 

 

 The new 5% higher price cap means we will pay more this Jan THAN ANY WINTER BEFORE.

Can somebody please explain to us here at Waverley Web how the energy price cap is much higher than in October 2021? Before the war in Ukraine, when wholesale prices were basically the same.


Image from Ofgem’s very own website of wholesale gas prices.

 The new 5% higher price cap means people will pay more this Jan THAN ANY WINTER BEFORE.

New 3mthly Price Cap Figures: From 1 Jan you’ll pay 5% more on average (every £100 paid now goes to £105).

For direct debit on average across the UK: ELEC: Unit rate: 28.62p/kWh (currently 27.35p), so up 4.6%. The standing charge is unchanged at 53.37p

GAS: Unit rate: 7.42p/kWh (currently 6.89p), up 7.6%. The standing charge is unchanged at 29.6p7p. So there are bigger rises for gas households than electricity and proportionately bigger for higher users (due to the impact of unit rates).

Yet you’ll pay so much more because last winter, every home received a £66/month govt reduction. You don’t have that this winter. So while October ‘inflation dropped due to cheaper energy bills’ – that ignores the missing govt support, in reality, we’re paying more for energy…

For a home on typical use (meaningless figure but good for illustration)...

Jan 2023: £2,380/yr Jan 2024: £1,928/yr So per month (not seasonally adjusted)

Jan 2023: £198/mth Jan 2024: £160/mth Now factor in govt support Jan 2023: £198 – £66 = £132/mth Jan 2024: £160/mth

In other words, a typical home pays £28/month more this winter, or factor in seasonal adjustments due to high winter use and as a back-of-envelope calculation, it is more like £ 45 per month more.

You have been warned! Avoid puddles.

The latest AA warning.

‘Avoid driving through puddles in case they are potholes.”

The AA is advising us hard-pressed motorists to “avoid puddles” following a record month of pot-hole-related breakdowns.

It received 52,541 callouts in October for vehicles damaged by pot-hole-related breakdowns – a 12% rise on the same period last year.

Quelle surprise! Any of us poor souls forced to navigate Surrey’s hole-ridden landscape could have written that script. However, having sat for hours awaiting recovery, one of our WW bloggers asks?

How, the hell are we supposed to see the puddles in the dark, drving back from work in a stream of traffic, at night with led headlights blinding us as they approach in the pelting rain?”

Tell us, please?

We would do anything to prevent the puncture, the damaged wheel and shock absorbers, the broken suspension springs and the huge garage repair bill that Surrey County Council refused to pay.

One of our bloggers knows and has the invoice to prove it!

The county council has a well-rehearsed string of excuses for not repaying motorists, even though you couldn’t begin to relate the inconvenience, the working hours lost, hospital appointments missed, and the misery of sitting on the roadside in the dark, trying to direct the traffic around you on a country road. Full of potholes covered by puddles.

So Mr Tony Rich, the AA spokesman, said:

“Our advice to drivers and those on two wheels, is to void puddles where safe, but if there is no alternative other than to travel through, then reduce your speed and keep an incresed distance from the vehicle in front.”

Easier said than done, Mr Rich. Ask a few cyclists what they think about swerving around puddles. Here at the WW, we picked one off the road and took him to A & E – no doubt he is now off work. I think it is what the Chancellor calls Growing the Economy.

Whilst we are on the subject of road safety. What has happened to all the cat’s eyes and white lines on our roads? Have they gone blind, or have we?

“There are whole stretches of road in Surrey that are breaking up in the centre, and the cat’s eyes are either severely damaged or are missing.