Cranleigh Parish Council put on an excellent Parish meeting
-in the warm, well lit village hall where the sound system and new acoustics work splendidly. There were dressed tables and the coffee shop was open, encouraging people to buy drinks and cakes. It was a relaxed, well run and informative session – thank you Parish council.
Cranleigh Parish Council news
Cranleigh Parish Council chair Marc Scully presented a brief outline of the council’s work for the year coming to an end and the year ahead. Highlights the Council was involved in were shown in a video including Lions events, Beacon lighting for VE day, Parkruns, Lantern parade and Christmas day lunch.
He praised outgoing Councillor Nigel Sanctuary for his amazingly hard work for the village and in particular to get the village hall to be much improved for all uses.
Marc praised the local shops, supermarkets, businesses and volunteers with Chairman’s Awards thanking them for stepping up to provide free Christmas day lunches. For those who would have otherwise been alone. Marc also praised Martin Bamford for all that he does for the village including photos and videos, as well as managing Knowle Park and Park run.
Marc welcomed new Parish councillor Claire Bennett and pointed out that there is another vacancy as Laura has also resigned. To understand all the volunteer councillors do read the minutes of their monthly meetings – all the different committees. Click here.
High Street
Jess Bramley and Helen from Surrey County Council presented the story of the latest consultations and outcomes of the High Street project. Many ideas have been rejected as reported earlier. There will be some money spent – it remains to be seen how wisely. What we all want is better pavements and no flooding especially where we cross. Click here to read what they say.
Both Council pavements and businesses’ pavements need improvement, to be smooth and safe – come on everyone! There should be better law enforcement concerning illegal parking too – who can help us out here please?
Cranleigh Leisure Centre
Cranleigh Leisure Centre will be built per the plans approved by Waverley councillors. The details will be worked on now that the outline plans can go ahead. The building is modern, brutalist in style, Passivhaus in terms of very low energy use, and will be built in the middle of the current car par.
The contractors will have to deal with the issues around parking as best they can until the new pool opens – around the end of 2027 – and then they will remove the current leisure centre and create further parking on that space. Waverley Borough Council depend on car parking fees to pay for services so no reductions of any kind available. Click here to read Waverley’s pages.
Cottage Hospital Project
Chairman of Cranleigh Heritage Trust Trevor Dale declared at the Parish meeting that the NHS property services have agreed all aspects of the lease between them and CHT. Now the National Lottery Heritage Fund will allow the project to proceed, paying invoices along the way. This has been an extensive and exhausting effort to simply agree terms between the volunteer group of trustees renovating their neglected cottage. Everyone involved is delighted – well done Trevor. please click here to read plenty more and view pictures too.
B.I.D.
B.I.D. Co-ordinator Christine spoke at the Parish meeting – Business Improvement Districts are a government initiative to enable local money to be levied to help local businesses along High Streets. Enough people were involved at the outset who ran businesses and had a large enough rateable value to get Cranleigh’s B.I.D. going. It was not unanimous and there have been many who say they can’t afford the extra money. But some good is coming of it and those who were against it are gradually seeing how it can work in their favour and be worth it. Christine is working with their business plans to deliver great services and projects that in turn promote a thriving High Street, a destination to be proud of.
Website Destination Cranleigh has a huge amount of interesting information that Cranleigh and villages benefit from.
A major issue is lack of mobile phone signal – councillors and MPs are pushing phone providers. Meanwhile the B.I.D. board are working on getting a Public WiFi – there are so many legal and technical hoops to jump through – if you support this please say so here
It will mean people can WhatsApp phone each other around the village. There would be little boxes high on lampposts….. it’s called Operation Connectivity.
Health & Wellbeing
Rosemary Hurtley spoke passionately about people’s health and wellbeing and how a group of people are working to make small changes to bring about big health and wellbeing benefits. The team are including the nearby villages which brings the population to around 33,000. There will soon be a community directory to connect people to support, and supporters to people who can benefit.
Destination Cranleigh and the Cranleigh Heritage Trust (Cottage Hospital) will be involved in providing and spreading information. Surrey County Council website has a page for people to browse and find out what is happening in Cranleigh – click here
The team will be training up Community Connectors and Champions so that plenty of people can help where perhaps statutory services are unavailable. It’s a great scheme.
Other news – water testing, flooding, sewage
Water Rangers around the country test rivers and streams for pollutants. They also scoop up tiny creatures to see how healthy they find the water – riverfly sampling. Cranleigh has a small team – would you like to join in? there aren’t enough of us.
Also we often have floods and sewage in places it shouldn’t be – please report to Thames water and Cranleigh society and councillor Liz Townsend – every bit of information helps put pressure on them to count numbers and set up an action plan. thanks
