Morning. The committee met last night and spent some money, Seething Wells is being quietly wound down, and Berrylands is getting its station back but not its stairs.
Five things, with prices. £6,532.03 for two Christmas trees, twenty to twenty-five feet, one on the roundabout at the station and one at Ewell Road and Princes Avenue in Tolworth, twenty-four strings of lights each. Tolworth needs a ballast system; Surbiton has a tree pit.
£1,681.66 for two benches on the shopping parade on Alexandra Drive in Berrylands. That is £657.05 a bench and £183.78 each to put in. £1,000 to the Alpha Road Residents' Association, towards a coach taking thirty of its senior citizens to the Christmas markets in Chichester. £2,800 to the Town Centre Partnership for the Surbiton Christmas event on 3 December.
And £3,000 to Voices of Hope for Baby BRITE boxes at Tolworth Children's Centre: ten families, six weeks, food and recipes handed over by the early years nutrition team rather than posted out. It ran first at Old Malden Family Hub. The decisions were taken in the room last night and the minutes are not up, so that is what was asked for, not yet what was granted.
A late paper went to the same meeting. In 2022, 1,301 of you signed a petition about the filter beds. It produced an all-party working group, eight evening meetings, nine recommendations, and three updates a year to this committee ever since. Last night's paper works through the recommendations one at a time, and the phrase that keeps coming back is “nothing further that reasonably can be done”.
The owners will not sell, will not fund a nature reserve, and will not engage further unless the council backs housing there. The council cannot afford a valuation — £10,000 was quoted for a broker's opinion alone. All four applications to Historic England were refused — the filter beds, the pump house, the railings, and 85 Portsmouth Road. Their reasoning is the sting: the site does not qualify because it is not under threat, and if that changes, apply again.
Meanwhile its status as a Site of Importance for Nature Conservation is at risk of being removed, because the way it is being managed has left it mostly standing water and bare ground. On 23 September the Place Committee will be asked to end the three-times-a-year reporting and drop to an annual note. That is the meeting, and that is the date.
The platforms are on schedule and the station still reopens late September. Its staircases do not. Surveys during the build “identified significant deterioration within parts of the staircase structure”, so the existing stairs will be shut when the station reopens and you will use temporary ones on both sides instead. Building started Monday, about two weeks. Snagging on the rest runs to November.
No lifts either. Control Period 7 funds renewal, not step-free access, and lifts need separate government money. So a £6m rebuild of a station on a five-metre embankment, and the way to a platform is still stairs. Temporary ones.
Round the station: parking restrictions on Chiltern Drive, the area outside the ticket office closed off for site access, and the footpath going on and off as construction traffic moves.
A UK Power Networks letter has been going through doors on Ditton Hill. Helen sent me hers. From Monday 14 September to Monday 28 September, while they work on Hook Road, the traffic management swaps: Ditton Road reopens, but only for traffic exiting to Ewell Road, and Kingsdowne Road closes at the Ewell Road end. Eight to five, Monday to Saturday. It is the Chessington to Kingston cable job borrowing the cycle scheme's traffic management, which is why the two are impossible to tell apart. It is on no council list.
The bit advertised nowhere: UKPN hold a public information event on the cable pulling, 6 to 8pm at The Maypole, 2 Hook Road. The letter says Monday 11 October. The 11th is a Sunday. So it is that Sunday or Monday the 12th — their care line is 0800 028 4587, weekdays 8.30 to 5.
Claremont Road shuts at 8 again tonight, Maple to Victoria, until 5am. Tonight and tomorrow are the last two. Victoria Road then goes round the clock at the Brighton Road junction from Monday to the 21st, and shuts again from St Andrew's Road to the station on Saturday the 26th for the Festival. Which makes Monday a day: Victoria Road shut at Brighton Road, Kingsdowne shut at Ewell Road, Ditton one-way out.
Tonight: two artists at the cornerHOUSE, 7 to 9, free — Emma Burton, who paints portraits and owls, and David Le Vay. · Quiz at the City Arms on Portsmouth Road, 7pm. Tomorrow: Celebrate Surbiton on the station forecourt, 4.30 to 8. · The community pantry at the library, 2 to 5.
Free bleed-control training, an hour, no medical background needed. How to pack a wound, where to press, how to use the kits beside the defibrillators. St John Ambulance at Worcester Park Baptist Church: Sunday 13th at 12.30, Monday 14th at 3.15, Tuesday 15th at 2pm and 8pm. Book at wpbc.org.uk/defibrillator.
Hollyfield School, Friday 18 September, 6.30pm: Namaste Kingston cooking for Nepal flood relief, proceeds through Rotary Surbiton. Their founder knew some of the women who died; she is cooking the dishes they taught her. namastekingston.org/event.
Still nobody has told me the score in Kingston FC's first league game. Someone in this town was at the Hawker Centre on Saturday.
Back tomorrow.
Mike
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