A New Dawn for the Town centre?

Last Wednesday, October 15th, a joint meeting of the Leatherhead & District Form and of Leatherhead Area Partnership (LAP) took place in Park House in Leatherhead. The main business was, as you may guess, the "Masterplan" for revitalizing Leatherhead's town centre.

It was decided that the two bodies would not attempt amalgamation at this moment but retain their separate identities while holding meetings in common. This, in my opinion, is a very sensible approach; I have felt for a long while that the merger of the Leatherhead Society with the Leatherhead Residents' Association was too precipitate - but I digress.

There was, as you may imagine, much discussion about the various problems the town faces and, indeed, has been facing for more than thirty years - ever since 1980 when Surrey County Council (SCC) pedestrianized the High Street and started its re-routing policies.

It is surely no co-incidence that the troubles this town has suffered, leading to its High Street being voted one of the worst in Britain in a BBC poll in 2002, did not begin until after the abolition of the old Leatherhead Urban District Council in 1974, and we became part of a two-tier local government set up with SCC and Mole Valley District Council (MVDC). Since then "planners" in both authorities have thought they knew best about Leatherhead with continuing disastrous results.

Part of the problem, of course, is that responsibilities are bizarrely shared between the two authorities. For example, SCC is responsible for on-street parking and MVDC for off-street parking. This has effectively prevented any attempt to achieve a coherent parking policy (something which I have called for in previous postings on the LRA Blog). In my opinion the sooner England follows Scotland and Wales in abolishing its two-tier authorities in favour of unitary authorities, the better.

Now, according to yesterday's Leatherhead Advertiser, "[c]ouncil officers estimate £100 million will eventually need to be spent... fore the masterplan to be fully realised." It is estimated that the new plan will not be completed for another 25 years; by that time I shall probably not be around to see its results. Meanwhile I see the results of 34 years of poor planning decisions.

I ask two questions:

• In forming the masterplan, will the councillors in both SCC and MVDC not only listen to the people of Leatherhead and district but actually take their concerns and wishes on board?
• When the masterplan is formed, will it really be implemented in full?

I ask those two questions because the experience of the past three decades does not make me optimistic, as you can see from this page on the recent history of Leatherhead archived on the old Leatherhead AHEAD website. It makes grim reading. Will this now truly be a "New Dawn for Leatherhead" as the Advertiser proclaims, or will it be more of the councils know best as in the past 30 years?

LAP and the Leatherhead & District Forum are acting together in talking to the two councils. The Forum has representatives from the residents' associations of Ashtead, Leatherhead, Fetcham and Bookham, from the Leatherhead & District Chamber of Commerce and from the Leatherhead Community Association inter alia. Its meetings are open to all. Get behind your relevant associations and/or groups and make sure your voice is heard!