This Tuesday’s meeting of the Local Committee was held especially to approve the plan and Programme for Woking that Surrey County Council has to submit to Cycling England to get hold of the £1.8M awarded to Woking, as one of ten towns emerging successful from bidding for the title ‘Cycling Town’.

Money

We don’t just get handed the money - it has to be matched by an equal amount raised from other sources. Given the general state of Surrey’s roads, the huge sums of money needed to repair them, and the cuts we are actually seeing Surrey County Council making in planned spending on Woking, it would be unwise to rely on County Hall handing over that sort of sum of money simply because this is a good, ecologically sound idea.

Contributions to matched funding will come from ’section 106 and section 27B’ money paid by developers and negotiated when planning permission is given; plus money squeezed from Woking’s ‘local allocation’, used for local road schemes - improvements such a controlled pedestrian crossings.

The paper to the committee says the ‘programme will need to be reviewed on an annual basis and the Local Committee for Woking decide on the priority given to the elements of work included within the Woking Cycling Town against other Integrated Transport schemes which are funded using the Local Transport Plan devolved budget.’

I think this message from the Local Highways Manager roughly translates as: ’Look, there’s a great two-for-one offer here but you guys on the Local Committee are going to have to fight out between you what gets dropped while we grab it.’ With the unspoken extra thought: ‘Unless you can get your Dad (ie County Hall) to stump up some more.’

(If you see the Developers as rich uncles, they’re less rich than they used to be … )   

But for the moment Surrey, in partnership with Woking, is going forward with a ’we’ll make it happen’ approach, which I find I have to applaud - this really is going to be a great improvement, and a practical contribution to reducing traffic congestion and sparing the environment.

The six essentials    

• Improving existing routes
• Making the Basingstoke Canal path a great route through the Borough with good links off it, including ways to and through the town centre, with a way of riding from the Canal to the station through the centre of the town.
• A better North / South route that will join up with National Cycle routes at Chertsey and Guildford.
• More bike parking, especially at stations. 
• Encouragement for people to cycle more.
• Links with schools

The Fancy Bits

There’ll be better signing. The trails will be named after planets and their moons. (Other towns have been looked at to see how they do things, and themes are common.) Lighting is currently not on the plans, but is recognised as being highly desirable, at least for the heavier use parts of the canal path near the centre of Woking.

I asked whether we mightn’t have some sculpture, as I’ve seen on some trails? This hasn’t been thought of yet, but the bridges will all be clearly named, so that they can be used as landmarks.

What it means for Knaphill and Goldsworth West

Although strictly only the stretch of towpath from Hermitage Bridge to Brookwood is in Knaphill, this is a significant route, as I saw when I bicycled it at the end of the school day last Monday. A number of children from the Winston Churchill school walk down along the Hermitage Road, cross fast-moving traffic, and then walk along the muddy and difficult path to the north of the canal, through the Country Park. Some primary school children also go in the opposite direction, from Brookwood school back towards Knaphill.

This route, on the same side as the Brookwood Hospital Estate, is broader than the towpath on the South side, but anyone using the Canal as a through route would have to cross the canal to change sides at the Hermitage Bridge, which has a very narrow path.  So the current intention is to provide an extra footbridge over the canal, so that pedestrians can avoid the crossing on the Hermitage Bridge, and then use the North side up to the bridge at Brookwood Crossroads.

Unfortunately that will make the rather splendid wheelchair-friendly ramp down to the southern path (itself currently impassable to wheelchairs) redundant. But I think it’s probably the right decision, given the number of people who will be able to access the northern path relatively easily.

As I understand it, the surface should be as good as the currently existing stretch from Woking Town Centre to Kiln Bridge. (The next section, to Hermitage Bridge, isn’t quite finished but should also come up to that standard.)

A good, safe pedestrian and cycling  route into St. Johns  or indeed all the way to Woking, will be a real benefit, for all ages.  One of the big problems for young or less well off people on the Hospital Estate is how to get off it - buses are expensive, parents not always available to drive.  And the more people who use the path, the safer even nervous people should feel it is to use.

(Which is not to guarantee there will be no problems - for example, motor cycles are going to have to be deterred from using the track, for everybody’s sake.)

So eventually, if we can get this section properly sorted out for Knaphill (including the new Hermitage Bridge) plus improvements and even some extensions to existing bike routes through Knaphill, I think we’ll be doing quite well. 

The improved routes into and out of Woking and will be good for Goldsworth West too, and its likely the whole of Goldsworth park will be targetted quite early on for ‘personalised travel planning’. What this’ll be I don’t know; I trust it will be a benefit and not a nuisance.

The launch will be this coming Monday, 22nd September, from 10.00am to 4.00pm at The Lightbox. I hope it doesn’t rain, so that I can get there comfortably by bike!

Yesterday local politics had its Cup Final, with the Tories left holding the Woking Cup. The scores were two all: they lost two, we gained two. One of our gains was Knaphill, a three-Councillor ward, where the Conservative was standing down and Liberal Democrat Ollie Wells won the seat back from the new Conservative candidate.

Olly is a young, energetic teacher who is going to be a great asset to the Liberal Democrat team on the Council. It’s also going to be an enormous help to me as the County Councillor covering that area to have another Liberal Democrat colleague on the Borough, alongside Ric Sharp.

I have always consulted with and passed on information to all Borough Colleagues about local issues such as roads, regardless of party. This is clearly in the best interest of the residents. The Borough Councillors have been elected to represent the residents, regardless of their political colour.

But it’s easier when their underlying assumptions about the right course of action is more likely to be in line with mine, because they share the same political ideals. (Even when in practical terms these ideals don’t diverge very far from each other - we all want to see the potholes in our own area filled in.)

Olly has been incredibly determined in getting out to talk to people, and interested in what they have to say and how Councillors can ‘make a difference’. I’m positively looking forward to working with him.

Voters turned off politics

The turnout in Knaphill was 39.48%. Yesterday, while I was knocking on the doors of people who we thought would want to vote, to remind them that it was election day, two said they were so fed up with the bickering, opportunistic arguments between political parties that they found none of them credible. They would not vote.

Our first-past-the-post electoral system does not help. We end up with two parties ritualistically locking antlers, bellowing and grunting. But neither of them dares stop, because if they do they’ll risk ending up badly gored.

Where it does work 

There is nothing like standing for election to keep Councillors working. At the end of your four years there’s no appeal, no industrial tribunal to go to. Like Sir Alan Sugar, the electorate can say without any come-back ‘You’re Fired!’.

Even with low turn-outs and a (wrong but inevitable) tendency to rely on the party faithful, it’s the votes at the margin that make the difference. In Liberal Democrat held areas in Woking, a town which at parliamentary level is currently overwhelmingly Conservative, if as a Councillor you’ve answered the ’phone calls, been out in the rain looking at trees and litter, then ‘phoning the relevant Officer to get  the problem sorted out, you may get the extra votes you need to win.

(Need I say more than ‘Rosie Sharpley’, with 1261 votes in Goldsworth East with her nearest rival at 654?)

The work being started on the tow path between St. John’s and Woking is routine maintenance. Three dead trees are being taken out and dead wood pruned out of another six trees. The lovely row of oaks is not being rooted out.

Between Kiln Bridge and Parley Drive two sections of the bank are going to be restored where they have eroded in the past and narrowed the tow path.

The application for planning permission to widen and improve the tow path more generally has not yet been decided. If it is allowed, the present maintenance work may overlap with these changes, but it is not pre-empting the planning process.   

Woking’s new gallery, The Lightbox, has been praised by critics in the national press, and by ordinary people enjoying its restaurant, permanent local history display, changing local exhibitions in the Upper Gallery, and larger exhibitions. There’s an education room, links with schools are being encouraged, and there are activities geared to families.

But the Lightbox has been slated by correspondents writing to the local press as a waste of taxpayers’ money. One colleague suggested to me I should be careful about speaking out in praise of it, because ‘it doesn’t play well on the doorstep’.

2D – 3D, the new exhibition in the main gallery, opened last Friday the 1st of February. It is a selection of sculpture and sculptors’ drawings from the personal collection of Chris Ingram, the businessman who also owns Woking Football Club. They are modern pieces by Jacob Epstein, Elizabeth Frink, Henry Moore, and others.

Most of them are easy to like, with rounded shapes that become more complex and fully human with viewing. My favourite is a life-size figure by Eduardo Paolozzi: ‘Portrait of the Artist’, modelled on ‘The artist as Hephaestus’. I must confess this is largely because it has stood in the café area for some time before being moved into the main exhibition hall, and I focussed on it during a creative writing workshop. Familiarity, in this case, bred admiration.
Enjoying and appreciating art is a personal experience that can take time. If, like me, you are not deeply knowledgeable, to come away with a feeling for one or two pieces is enough. Sometimes more – the rush around a huge National collection, a significant journey away – can be less. This is even more the case for families with children.

The ‘2D – 3D’ exhibition is small enough to begin to take in over one visit, and also – very important! – free, so that it’s possible to come to see it, and revisit at will, without it costing anything extra to your Council Tax or past lottery ticket. The existence of the Lightbox has allowed Mr. Ingram to provide much of the value.
I am not a total softy when it comes to arts funding. The Lottery takes money from the less well off. Tax-payers don’t have bottomless pockets. In my opinion a utilitarian approach to Arts funding is justified.

But here we have great value for money: a unique exhibition open free to everyone, in the centre of Woking. Anyone of any age could get something from looking around it. If you’re in Woking, give it a go.