The Conservative Administration of Runnymede Borough Council, with the support of an Ottershaw Independent Councillor, pushed through an unbudgeted spend of £170K to recruit a second Assistant Chief Executive at the December Corporate Management committee, held on 15th December. This is at a time when the Council's budget is under severe pressure.
The application to approve the Railway Station car park for Longross Garden Village was refused by the Runnymede Planning Committee last night. The application has been a long saga with a change to its location (to 300m away from the station entrance), dating back to 2020. The grounds for refusal sited safety as Surrey Police had stated that the original location at the station entrance met the criteria of being "as close to the facility for which they are designed as possible….providing natural surveillance across the site from other travelers and railways staff on the nearby platforms." The majority of the Planning Committee felt that the proposed location was too far away from the entrance to meet this requirement. Concerns were also expressed about the lack of a drop off facility near the station as well as having only 3 disabled spaces for an eventual population of about 5000 people.
Please sign our petition to Protect the health of people living near Mineral Workings across Surrey.
Our Green Motion, proposed by Cllr Don Whyte, was defeated last night (Thursday 20 Oct) after a rather long Full Council meeting at Runnymede Borough Council.
We were saddened to learn that the quality of many of our rivers and streams in Runnymede have deteriorated considerably, mainly due to sewage discharge. These include The Bourne at Chertsey, Virginia Water Lake and The Moat at Egham, all of which have an ecological status of "Poor".*
With one third of all the Runnymede Borough council seats up for election, they were an important indicator of current sentiment.