It seems that borough and county councillor Nigel Petrie recently failed to be re-selected as an RA candidate for next June's county council elections. At least this is being stated by Stoneleigh RA chairman Bill Slaughter as the reason behind Cllr Petrie's sudden surprise announcement that he has joined the Conservative party.
Two controversial planning applications affecting the former stables of "The Durdans" in Chalk Lane have been resoundingly rejected at a special meeting of the Planning Committee.
When the latest FOCUS newsletter predicted a personal attack on the Lib Dem candidate from the Labour party, they were absolutely right!
Liberal Democrats are pleased to publicise that the council's recycling vehicles also now collect household batteries and claim most residents have no idea that their doorstep collection will deal with these items.
The council is expanding its doorstep collection of waste later this month after years of pressure from Liberal Democrats councillors. The first areas to benefit from collection of cardboard and plastic bottles are confirmed as Nonsuch, Stoneleigh, Ewell and parts of Town and College wards.
With a pilot scheme well underway in Court Recreation Ground, Tennis for Free has launched a second scheme in the borough - in Alexandra Recreation Ground. The launch on 17th January was attended by upwards of 50 youngsters, all of whom set their sights on being great tennis players in the future!
Figures obtained recently by Cllr David Goodwin show that the recent refurbishment of County Hall in Kingston, which also involved the costs of moving staff from one office to another, will total £3.123 million spread over 3 years.
Last year, Conservative dreams of seeing Surrey declared an 'excellent' County Council were shattered by Ofsted's shocking findings in the Joint Area Review. Vulnerable children were not safe in Surrey. By the Autumn the Secretary of State had given Surrey notice that it must carry out a demanding two-year improvement programme, meeting a rigorous series of targets, or risk having its services taken over.
In this year's budget the Tories included bus service cuts as one of the ways of paying for a lower council tax increase than in previous years. More than 10% of the subsidy will be cut next year.
Surrey Liberal Democrats at County Hall have been denied the opportunity to debate the failures of the Tory administration and the millions of Council Taxpayers' money wasted. The ruling Conservative group refused to allow the debate saying that they did not have enough information to debate the subject adequately.
The European Parliament has come to an agreement with the European Council on a deal that will significantly cut the cost of mobile roaming SMS (texting) and data charges from the 1st July 2009.
Surrey Police have cut costs and red tape, to put more PCs back on the streets. However their government grant is less than half the national average, so despite cutting 144 administrative jobs, they needed to raise their share of council tax by 4.9%. The Labour government has threatened to "cap" them, which would entail the loss of another 80 staff, including front line PCs.
