At a meeting on 3rd September, Epsom & Walton Downs Conservators gave the go-ahead for two days of concerts (13th and 14th June 2009) on Epsom Downs and their decision was approved with support from the Borough Council at a specially convened meeting on Friday 12th September.
The Borough Council in association with Nam Yang Martial Arts Centre are staging a Fun Day in Alexandra Recreation Ground on Saturday 13th September.
Demolition is well underway of the former Allam Motors site in Upper High Street, Epsom and one councillor at least has welcomed swift action taken by new owners confirmed as Tesco.
Following the damning Ofsted review of Surrey County Council's services for vulnerable children (see the previous news item) the Lib Dem group of councillors have called on the Tory Leader of the Council to resign.
A Joint Area Review of Surrey and its partners' Children' Services, published by Ofsted this July, highlights shocking failures to keep children safe and to meet the needs of young people with learning difficulties and/or disabilities.
Surrey County Council's Lib Dem councillors, which include Colin Taylor representing Epsom & Ewell SW Division, have published their achievements over the past couple of years. SW Division takes in the Epsom wards of Town, Stamford and part of Court.
At the recent Council meeting, Liberal Democrats proposed a motion that Surrey County Council should come out against further expansion of Heathrow.
In answer to a question from John Doran, Lib Dem transport spokesperson, the Conservative executive member for transport on Surrey County Council admitted that the council was on target to under-spend its roads budget by nearly £1 million pounds. Mr Munro said "£1 million is about right".
Tory-led Surrey County Council voted today to keep the freeze on youth service recruitment, despite the obvious damage it is causing to youth services throughout Surrey. Liberal Democrat Councillor Diana Smith (Knaphill) put forward a motion calling for an immediate end to the recruitment freeze, put in place in December 2007. But the ruling Tory group voted to keep the status quo.
The 'equal preference' system for school admissions was first used for admissions to Surrey schools this year, September 2007. It means that parents don't have to worry that they will lose a place in the second or third of their preferred schools if the first school is full, just because they did not place those schools first.
When the Conservative administration at County Hall took an axe to its Emergency Planning department as part of a major review, the 11 staff were reduced to just 7 - putting the whole county at risk. All the staff bar one left, leaving the county in an extraordinarily vulnerable state for several months, made worse because a freeze in recruitment blocked the advertising for new staff.
At the Transport Select Committee on 5th December members were given the latest set of Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) for the ill fated Surrey Highways Partnership (SHiP). The SHiP is the arrangement whereby Carillion manages road maintenance in the East of the County and Ringway in the West. Although there has been some improvement things are still not good enough.
