After the first flurry of Committee meetings at the start of September it hasn’t exactly gone quiet - people are still very discontent with the state of their roads; Highclere Road still floods; Barleymow Lane is still hazardous for pedestrians; the Vehicle Activated Sign near Warbury Lane is still not working; the Old Library is still an eye-sore. And more beside.

Alight!

One small miracle did happen over the Summer, though I did not notice it until the darker evenings: the light column replacing the one outside Beaulieu in the Chobham Road has come on. 

 J

I’ve been trying to get it fixed for getting on for five years  - it was one of my first pieces of ‘casework’ after I became a Councillor, and has been a constant reminder of how powerless (literally!) Surrey seems to be when faced with EDF

Youth Services

I’m also involved in some ‘task groups’. One is concerned with the future of Youth Services in Surrey. Things have got to change - progressive underfunding is weakening the good work that does happen; while some buildings, such as Lakers on Goldsworth Park, remain very underused. There would have been more cuts, including reducing the number of staff even further, if an extra half a million pounds had not been found at the last minute from some ad hoc corner of last year’s budget.

The Youth Development Service can’t do everything, and may be best specialising in the intervention work its staff do very well.

There remains Surrey’s obligation to take a lead in making sure there is a good ‘Youth Offer’ of positive activities, even if it does not provide them itself. 

There has been a study over the summer of what Surrey’s Youth Service does, and what young people want. The results were unsurprising: more safe places to meet, more interesting things to do, better transport to reach them.

The Youth Petition

What I’d like to see happen in Knaphill and Golsworth West is summed up in the wording of the petition which Cllr. Olly Wells will be taking to the next Local Committee meeting:

We the undersigned ask the Woking Local Committee to endorse the view that Surrey County Council should take a full leadership role in providing more ‘places to go and things to do’ for young people as part of the overall Youth Offer within Surrey. We ask that underused youth centres and school premises are regarded as a resource that can be ‘brought to the table’ locally in partnership with authorities such as Woking Borough Council and with Voluntary organisations to provide a wide range of positive activities for young people out of school hours, with affordable access by public or community transport. In the Knaphill area, we request that a Youth Offer be developed which includes:

·        Lakers Youth Centre open regularly at evenings and weekends as a ‘youth hub’ and including youth café style provision.

·        Youth café style provision compatible with its present use being developed at Woking Youth Arts Centre                                                 

·        An additional ‘drop in’/youth café facility on the Brookwood Hospital estate and within walking distance of any new housing.

·        More sports opportunities for all local young people using existing school facilities and recreation grounds.

We have several hundred signatures so far, and could easily have gathered more.

It’s all happening at the Library …

The new Knaphill Library has also absorbed some time and effort, though generally in a fun way.

I was the only person at the First Thursday book group to totally enjoy ‘The Devil Wears Prada’, but we had a good conversation. Not wholly about the book. Actually, not much about the book.

I’ve also stood in a couple of times this month leading the Rhymetime session for toddlers (with their mothers) on Friday morning. Fortunately the mothers generally know the rhymes and actions better than I do, and only want someone to put together a running order and keep them together. But this morning I introduced one of my favourites - ‘There was an old woman tossed up in a basket’ - which is sung to the tune of Lillibulero.  They (the mothers) did now know it.  I tried to sing.  Apologies are due to all present.  

Apologies are also due to all readers of the upcoming Goldsworth Park News. There is going to be a talk at the Library at 4.30 on Saturday 11th October - not the 18th of October - about tracing your family tree. This will be given by a speaker from the Surrey History Centre. Admission will be by ticket, for a small fee to cover the cost.

If you are interested in genealogy and would like to share your knowledge and experience with other people, there’s scope for a group to meet more often in the library - where there’s also the draw of being able to make use not only of the computers, but of Surrey’s subscription on your behalf to services such as Ancestry.

We’re also still hoping to form a second, daytime book group, and have more sessions on Local History.

Looking forward

 Serious political notes will return with the next Full Council on the 14th of October, and I expect outcomes from the JAR to be getting clearer in the next weeks. In the meantime, I will put together my notes on another very sore issue - the adoption of roads on the Hospital Estate in Knaphill - where the complexity of the situation seems almost overwhelming, especially in present economic conditions with developers changing and permutating their names faster than management consultants!