Morning, Surbiton. The K2 is back — TfL has it on a good service this morning and the diversion notice has vanished, so that promise is kept. The rest of today is about the roads nobody told you about: a letter that changed how I think about this newsletter, two streets dug up this week that the council's list doesn't mention, and the answer to a mystery a reader handed me last month. Also a world championship, tomorrow, on Alexandra Drive, free to walk into. First, though, an apology about the weather.
Yesterday I signed off promising you a day ten degrees cooler, with a decent chance of a shower. This morning's forecast says 29°C and dry — under a five per cent chance of rain at any hour of the day. So that's three degrees off yesterday's peak, not ten, and no shower to plan around. Sunny spells, hazy by the afternoon, humid, and still 18°C when you go to bed.
The break is real, it's just a day late. Wednesday 25°C with a few showers in the morning and a proper breeze getting up, Thursday 23°C with showers likely in the afternoon, Friday 24°C and calm. So today is the last of the sticky ones.
The hosepipe ban is still on, unchanged — watering can, after the sun's off the garden.
Met Office forecast for Kingston, read at half past eight · ban status from Thames Water this morning
Somebody is reading this newsletter out loud
On Friday Helen wrote in from the Kingston Talking Newspaper with a line I haven't been able to put down: there is nothing on a closed bus stop to tell a blind person it's closed. Yesterday Enid wrote in from the same place, and told me what happens to the roads box after you've read it.
She's the one who updates the travel information for their listeners. Her verdict on the official sources is blunt, and I'm quoting her: the council site updates “fortnightly — if we are lucky” and doesn't mention bus stops or routes at all. So a diverted K2 or a temporary light on a crossing, the sort of thing that's a mild irritation if you can see it coming, reaches people who can't through somebody like Enid, by hand, at whatever speed she can find it.
So I went and looked the service up properly, because I'd mentioned it twice now without ever telling you what it actually is. The Kingston Talking Newspaper is a free audio digest of local news, every fortnight, for blind and partially sighted people in the borough. It arrives on a memory stick, posted out free under Royal Mail's Articles for the Blind, and there's a web player and a podcast feed for anyone who'd rather listen that way. There is no charge for any of it. If you know someone in Surbiton who's losing their sight and quietly losing the local news with it, this is the thing to tell them about: ktnews64@gmail.com, or 020 8287 4180.
And they need people. Volunteers, Wednesday afternoons and Thursday mornings, for reading, production and getting the sticks out of the door. That's a couple of hours a week to put the local news in someone's ears. Several of you have written in asking where to volunteer locally — this is a very good answer.
Service details from the Kingston Association for the Blind, checked this morning · Enid, if I've got any of your side of it wrong, tell me and I'll print the correction.
The world championship starts tomorrow, 9.30am, and it's free
I've been trailing this for days and now I can give you the practical version. From tomorrow until Sunday, Surbiton Croquet Club on Alexandra Drive hosts the closing matches of the MacRobertson Shield — the world team championship of association croquet, contested by England, Australia, New Zealand and the United States. It is held once every four years. This is the first time Surbiton has hosted it since 2010, so the next home fixture is a long way off.
What you need: play starts at 9.30am each day and runs well into the afternoon, entry is free, there's nothing to book, and there's a cash bar. Best detail — club members will be on hand to explain what's going on, which solves the only real problem with watching croquet. Children are welcome with an adult. Tomorrow's 25°C and a breeze is far better standing-about weather than yesterday would have been.
Details from the club and the event listing, both read this morning · Surbiton Croquet Club, Alexandra Drive, KT5 9AA
Planning corner: what's been filed on your street
Seven Surbiton and Tolworth addresses turn up in this week's statutory notices, and most of it is trees — which in this borough is most of everything. There's tree work filed on Southborough Road (a dead copper beech coming down), Ewell Road (a fig felled, a holm oak lifted), Adelaide Road (holly, magnolia, quince and a crab-apple hedge trimmed back), Corkran Road (a pine, a strawberry tree and a box elder) and Herne Road in Tolworth, where a dead conifer and a dead sycamore are coming out.
The two building ones are both in Berrylands. Rose Walk — the road whose garage track is at the heart of Des's flat-route-to-the-Hogsmill question in yesterday's issue — has an application in for a single-storey rear extension, 5.22 metres deep. And on Pine Walk, an approved scheme has been amended: the two-storey side extension is dropped, windows and doors change, and the walls go to render.
From the statutory public notices published 30 July, via the Public Notice Portal, where the full addresses and reference numbers are searchable if you want to check your own street.
Our MP has been on the phone to the new Prime Minister about carers
Sir Ed Davey, MP for Kingston and Surbiton, spoke to Prime Minister Andy Burnham by phone last Wednesday about fixing the care system. Davey has been a carer his whole life and cares for his disabled son, who needs round-the-clock support, so this is not a talking point for him. “I raised the issue which is close to my heart, of family carers,” he said, and reported that the PM “clearly wants to crack on” and wants all the main parties involved — while being straight that it was short on specifics: “I feel hopeful about the talks, but this is just the beginning.” If you're one of the many people in this town looking after a parent or a partner without calling yourself a carer, that's the process you're now inside of.
Reported by Tilly O'Brien · via Kingston Nub News, 31 July
The marketplace fountains are off
If a run-through-the-fountains was on your school-holiday list, take it off for now. The council switched off the Ancient Market Place fountains in Kingston last Thursday to save water: “Although the fountain recycles water, it's topped up from the mains — and needs even more regular replenishment in this heat.” They added that they're “sorry it can't continue for the time being”, which tells you they know exactly who's going to be disappointed. Temporary, they say, and tied to the drought and the hosepipe ban.
Reported by Tilly O'Brien · via Kingston Nub News, 30 July
Two roads dug up this week that aren't on the council's list — and the mystery of Berrylands Road, solved
Since Enid's letter is at the top of this issue, it's the right morning to show you the problem she's describing. I went past the council's roadworks page this morning and into the statutory register — the permits utilities must legally file before they lift a slab — and found two live jobs the council's list doesn't carry.
Hollyfield Road is closed. UK Power Networks filed it as an emergency on 31 July and started the same morning; the permit runs to Thursday 6 August. A full road closure, in the middle of the Ewell Road works, and it is not on the council's page. And Tolworth Broadway loses a lane from today — a council job of its own, 4 to 6 August, also unlisted.
Which brings me to something that's been bothering me since 17 July, when Alison reported temporary lights on Berrylands Road that appeared on no official list anywhere. I could never find them. I can now: UK Power Networks held two permits on Berrylands Road — a major job, six weeks of it, with a formal traffic order, from 31 May to 13 July. It never once reached the council's roadworks page.
Now, honestly: those permits closed on 13 July and Alison wrote on the 17th, so I can't tell you they're the same lights. Signals do sit around for days after the digging stops — Hook Road did exactly that to us last month. What I can tell you is that a six-week major job with a road closure happened on her street this summer and the official list never mentioned it. She wasn't imagining it, and the list was never going to help her.
That's the whole argument for this roads box, and for Enid doing what she does by hand. The council's list is useful and I'll keep reading it. It is not the same thing as the truth.
Permits from the Department for Transport's Street Manager register, the statutory record · the register publishes monthly, so anything filed since 1 August is not yet visible to me — if your street got dug up this week, I'd rather hear it from you.
- ✅ The K2 is back. Promise kept: TfL shows Good Service this morning and the diversion notice is gone entirely. Berrylands Road, Regent Road, Pembroke Avenue and the station stop are all back on the route.
- The K3 is still diverted until 8pm tomorrow — the emergency works are in Hare Lane, Claygate, and TfL has buses going round via Aston Road, Cavendish Drive and Oaken Lane, missing everything between Oaken Lane and The Parade / Claygate Station in both directions.
- Closed or narrowed now: Hollyfield Road, full closure to Thursday · Tolworth Broadway, a lane gone from today to Thursday · the Ewell Road gully works near Tolworth Close finish Friday · and the Ditton Road and Kingsdowne Road closures are still on until January 2027 — but they are short stretches at the Ewell Road junction end, not whole streets severed, which I don't think I've made clear enough before.
- Hook Road: the current closure permit runs out on Friday, with the last of the digging near the Shell garage due to finish around the 9th, and the A3 feed already says all lanes are open at Vale Road North after the electrical repair. Don't get comfortable — UK Power Networks have further closures granted from 13 August running through to November. This is a whole programme, not a job.
- Night closures, 8pm–5am: Eden Street tonight · Galsworthy Road tomorrow night · Kings Road Thursday night · Villiers Road continuing to Saturday. Plan the late drive home around Villiers Road especially.
- Coming: two-way signals on St Mark's Hill — the council says Friday, the permit says Thursday, so treat it as Thursday · Upper Brighton Road at Glenbuck Road, Saturday and Sunday. Hook Rise South: the dates I gave you last week were wrong — there's no live job there now. A lane closure has been applied for from 10 August but not yet granted.
- The A3 at Tolworth is still absent from TfL's live feed. I can't prove it's finished, but there's nothing there to report.
TfL live status and the A3 disruption feed, read at ten to nine · permits from the Street Manager register · night closures from the council's roadworks list (last updated 31 July).
This weekend, engineering work hits us properly. Saturday, buses replace trains between Surbiton and Effingham Junction, with Waterloo–Guildford services diverted after Surbiton. Sunday, the Surbiton to Hampton Court line is closed all day, buses instead. It repeats the weekends of 15–16 and 29–30 August. Check before you travel rather than trusting me — but if you've got a Sunday plan that involves Hampton Court, now you know.
The correction. Last week I told you a South Western Railway drought timetable starts on 10 August. Having gone back at it, everything I can find says that timetable is for the West of England line — Waterloo to Salisbury and Exeter, where dry clay embankments are shifting the track — and not for our line at all. I couldn't get SWR's own page to load this morning to nail it down, so I'll confirm it properly before the 10th. Sorry for the needless worry.
- 7.45pm — Corinthian-Casuals v Tooting & Mitcham, at home. Combined Counties Premier South, at the Armada Group Stadium — King George's Field, Queen Mary Close, off Hook Rise South, Tolworth KT6 7NA. Non-league football on a warm Tuesday evening is one of the better things this postcode offers and I don't write about it enough. Gate prices are on the club's site.
- 7.30pm — the secrets of the Bayeux Tapestry, a talk by Matthew Bowman at the cornerHOUSE, 116 Douglas Road. Doors 7pm, finishes 9pm. Members free; “non-members are asked to contribute £4”.
- 6.30–7.30pm — Men's Walk & Talk, from the Glenbuck Road entrance of Surbiton station. Free, no need to book, just turn up and walk.
- 11am and 3pm — Ministry of Science Live! at the Rose, on until Sunday. Note Friday's shows move to 2pm and 6pm.
- School holidays, free: the athletics camp at the Weir Archer Centre, 10am–12, ages 11–16, running again tomorrow and Thursday but not Friday · and the Oxygen Fuel holiday club at Archway Hall, Somerset Road, 11am–3pm, which includes lunch. Oxygen Fuel skips tomorrow — it's Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday only.
- The Tuesday quiz on your reader-built map is the Black Lion on Brighton Road. I could not confirm this week's independently, so ring ahead rather than turn up on my say-so.
Fixture from the club's own site, talk from the cornerHOUSE listing, camps from Connected Kingston — all read this morning.
- Wednesday — croquet from 9.30am (above), and FUSEBOX in Kingston reopens with What Makes Us, 70-odd artists, its first exhibition in over a year after what the organisers call “two devastating flooding incidents”. Wednesdays to Fridays, midday till 7pm, through to 28 August.
- Friday — Wellbeing Day at Queen Mary Hall, Cambridge Gardens, 11am–2pm, free: health checks, a dentist, foot care, haircuts, bike repairs, soup and cake. First Friday of the month, and a genuinely useful couple of hours.
- Saturday — volunteering at the Tolworth Station community garden, 10.30am–1pm, drop in for an hour or the lot. No farmers' market this weekend — it's the third Saturday, so 15 August.
Sunny spells, hazy through the afternoon, humid, up to 29°C, and dry — under five per cent chance of rain all day. Muggy overnight at 18°C.
The week: Wednesday 25°C, a few morning showers, breezy · Thursday 23°C, showers likely in the afternoon · Friday 24°C and calm. Croquet weather improves as the week goes on.
The Berrylands book has a local author.Simon wrote in to say the history of the Berrylands estate that Sarah recommended on Monday — The Eighteen-Month Suburb, by Daniel McEndoo — was written by a friend of his, who lives locally. A local author, a local subject, recommended by a local reader, and now read by rather more of them. That's a good Monday's work by all three of you.
The farmers' market, as far as I can establish.Tim mentioned a farmers' market on Woodbines Avenue and I've spent a while trying to confirm it — I can't find any trace of one. The market I can stand behind is on Maple Road, third Saturday of the month, 9am till 1pm, so next on 15 August, run entirely by volunteers with the stall fees going to local causes. Tim, if you've seen stalls on Woodbines Avenue, tell me what you saw and when, because I'd like to be wrong about this.
Welcome to Kelly in Berrylands, who wants new road closures — “so many all the time and some very last minute” — and local openings. Kelly, that's the roads box and it's the single most-requested thing in this newsletter, so you're in good company. And welcome to Enid, who is at the top of today's issue. We're at 490 subscribers this morning.
One ask, and it's Enid's really. If a bus stop near you is closed, a crossing is dug up, or a pavement is blocked and it hasn't reached the council's list yet — reply and tell me. You've beaten the official sources more than once now. Today you found out where that information ends up.
That's Tuesday. Last sticky one, so do the sweaty jobs today. Tomorrow: croquet from half nine, and I intend to go and get somebody to explain the hoops to me.
Mike, Surbiton Daily
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