News roundup week ending 29 March

There hasn’t really been a lot of local news this last week.  An entire issue of the Herald has managed without a single story or letter about “fury”, “woes” or “anger”, about parking or indeed anything else.
 

Perhaps this is explained by the news that Waverley Borough has been found in a survey by the Halifax to “enjoy the highest standards of living in rural Britain”.
 

 

Mind you, the Herald did manage to get in one reference to parking – in this item about the decision by Waverley Councillor Vorley to defect from the Tories.

 

I do have my own concerns about the huge imbalance in the representation on Waverley Council.  Not because they are 95% Tory, although I don’t share their philosophy, and certainly not because of any alleged arrogance or high-handedness, which I absolutely do not see, in fact it is their accusers in the “Haslemeres” plural who live in glass houses and should not throw stones.  But it is not healthy for the council to have no effective opposition, or for the majority of borough residents who voted either LibDem or Labour at the last elections to have no representation at all.
 

The Surrey Advertiser reports that human remains have been found, under a car park in Godalming, during groundworks for new affordable homes.  Rumours that the remains are of the proprietor of Woodie & Morris,  whose response to Surrey County Council’s announcement of the Petworth Road zebra crossing, was to tweet “Over My Dead Body” because she would prefer three parking spaces to a safe place for her customers to cross the road, are believed to be unfounded.
 

Oh, and Councillor Stephen Mulliner managed to get a letter in the Herald last week, about his vote against an increase in Waverley councillors’ allowances, and his intention not to take them personally, for the second time – a verbatim replica of a letter published only a few weeks ago.  In electioneering mode already evidently!
 

 

 

On the subject of Democracy, we are in for rather a lot of that, such as it is, in the coming two months.

Haslemere Town Council is holding an open meeting at the Georgian Hotel on Monday, April 29, at 7pm where you can hear presentations on the work of the council – that should be a short one, a hundred grand of staff and admin costs to arrange few Christmas lights and grass cutting on Lion Green - and have the opportunity to meet your local councillor. Let’s hope yours isn’t Stephen Mulliner.  Of four meetings of the Amenities Committee last year, Councillor Mulliner attended one, so will he actually turn up?

 

Haslemere & Villages Vision has issued an invitation to join them at an open day on Saturday, April 27, where you can tell them your ideas for improving the town.  Just like the 100 or so people who attended their last meeting in September, when they were the Haslemere Neighbourhood Planning Forum, from which there has been nothing to indicate what was discussed at that meeting, rumour has it because the peoples’ ideas did not fit with the priorities of the organisers.

 

I wrote a letter to the Herald last week.  They didn’t print it.  Here it is:

Dear Sir

So, there it is. “Haslemere & Villages Vision” (née Haslemere Hub) has launched. According to its Mission Statement it is “a non-political, community-led forum. Its object is to enable the people and organisations of Haslemere and adjacent villages to pool ideas and resources to create a vision and a plan of how we wish the town and the villages to develop in the future. It will undertake and deliver projects that preserve and enhance the wellbeing of the town and the villages for the benefit of all who live work and play here.”

Now, if this genuinely means that it will seek wide support from the whole population of the town, and will listen to what they have to say, and not just sweep under the carpet the bits which are not convenient or don’t fit the ideas they already have, then I welcome it.

But that, I fear, is a Big “If”.

The front page article in last week’s Herald features a photograph, of six volunteers showcasing the Photographic competition. Of those six, I can recognise two as being leading figures in the “Haslemere Action Group” Against the Parking Proposals – probably the most divisive special interest group to have blighted this town in many years. A group which has sought to steamroller over the legitimate wishes and interests of several hundred residents who live in town-centre roads blighted by all-day parking by commuters, especially those using the railway station. Which did not consider it necessary to engage with those residents who had been petitioning, in some cases for years, for relief from the difficulty or even impossiblility of parking anywhere near their own homes thanks to incomers whose only connection with the town was to use the railway station and who are not even resident in the County, let alone the town. Which simply objected to every proposal advanced by Surrey and Waverley’s Local Area Committee, of whatever nature, down to lobbying against zebra crossings and for the dangerous practice of nose-in parking on the high street. Which even now fights a rear-guard action to have the schemes about to be introduced terminated at the earliest possible date. Which has – so far – successfully lobbied against a solution which would have worked reasonably satisfactorily for the residents of Beech Road and patients attending outpatient appointments at the Hospital. In short, a group which is loathed by a significant number of people, as has been demonstrated in your letters pages before.

A third is “President” of the Haslemere Society. A body with a membership of a few hundred at most, but which assumes to itself the right to pass judgement on all that occurs, or is proposed, in this town of 16,000 inhabitants. Which appears to oppose almost everything – the siting of a new library a few years ago so that we still don’t have a proper library, a multi-storey car park which they now join in citing as the solution to our parking problems and so a reason for inaction now, individual residential planning applications which are none of their concern.

In its previous incarnation as Haslemere Hub, this group hosted a meeting last September, attended by about 100 people. All of the time and effort contributed by those people has so far resulted in – precisely nothing. Their website has no new entries since last October – no minutes, no proposals, nothing. Apparently some 20 or so people continue the work, so what happened to the other 70 or more? Did they not agree with the Vision?

As a leaflet which has today appeared under the windscreen wipers of cars parked around the station shows, Haslemere & Villages Vision is willing to acknowledge publicly that it is allied with these groups, further implying that it has adopted a partisan stance.

I think these people have already made up their minds, and will not be needing your opinions.

Yours etc

I bumped into the eminence grise  behind HAVV on the train the other day - he is my next-door neighbour - and he was keen to involve me, apparently.  He did say that HAVV is not aiming to achieve consensus, because that is just the lowest common denominator and that way nothing happens.  Prima facie, I would say that he is right about that, but vigilance will be required to ensure that this does not translate into the views of those "Haslemeres" prevailing against contrary views of the residents at large.

 

Candidates for the Surrey County Council elections will soon be confirmed.  In Haslemere, Stephen Mulliner is succeeding Steve Renshaw, who is standing down, as the Conservative candidate.   I have no information on the candidates for Labour or the LibDems, however the Haslemere parking action group is fielding a twin candidacy by Alan “Howling Laud” Hope and his deceased feline companion Cat Mandu, and the Monster Raving Loony Party candidate will  apparently be Nikki Barton – I think I might have got those last two the wrong way round.

If Steven Mulliner is elected to Surrey, that means he will be in all three levels of local government.  It seems to me that this raises questions of conflicts of interest – certainly  HTC has been at daggers drawn with Surrey/Waverley for some time, especially over the car parking issue.  I question where he is going to find the time to do all three rôles properly, but I think the answer is – he won’t.  His attendance record at HTC is not scintillating – he missed three of four meetings of the Amenities Committee last year and didn’t attend all full council meetings either  – and a request to Waverley for details of his attendance at their meetings elicited the following response from Waverley “Democratic Services”:

Cllr Stephen Mulliner Attendance

2011-12 Attendance

- Full Council – 2 out of 8

- Corporate Overview and Scrutiny – 5 out of 8

- Joint Planning Committee – 1 out of 1

- Area Planning Committee (Southern) – 6 out of 10

- Audit Committee – 4 out of 4

2012-13 Attendance (up to 26 March 2013)

 

- Full Council – 2 out of 6

- Corporate Overview and Scrutiny – 3 out of 6

- Area Planning Committee (Southern) – 6 out of 9

- Audit Committee – 4 out of 5

And finally,

 

The ground work for the Petworth Road zebra crossing is coming along nicely, much to the chagrin of the proprietors of Woodie & Morris.  A new smaller layby has been installed outside Haslemere Travel, the kerb has been built out close to the junction outside Sports Locker, and the road has been resurfaced, but the “piano key” markings and beacons are yet to come.  Looking forward to it!