There was a stunning result in last week's by-election in Grove Ward, Kingston, where Lib Dem Jon Tolley was elected with a with a greatly increased majority majority of 889 votes over the Conservative candidate.
For many years, the possibility of building a lay-by outside the parade of shops on East Street next to Chuters Grove has been discussed. Residents have complained, that parking on the highway and also on the pavement has delayed traffic wanting to travel into Epsom and also made it difficult to see oncoming traffic from vehicles turning onto East Street. Officers had been reluctant to build a lay-by as it would be very expensive due to the pipes and cables under the pavement which would have to be lowered.
Geraldine Locke only joined the Liberal Democrats in May. On July 3rd she won the Hampton Wick by‑election in Twickenham - taking a previously safe Tory seat where the Lib Dems had not won since 1998.
Lower Mole Countryside Trust sought funding to create a dog free area to protect great crested newts.
Perhaps the most surprising thing since polling day last week has been the unprecedented surge in membership of the Liberal Democrats, both nationally and locally.
Just a few days after criticial local elections across all of Surrey, residents who use Bagshot, Cranleigh, Dorking and Warlingham CRCs will only be able to take recycling to these sites, from Tuesday 7 May 2019. The change comes following a Cabinet decision in January 2019 to keep the sites open temporarily in order to find an alternate route of funding.
The County Council admitted in its Cabinet meeting, on the 26th March 2019, that the car park charges introduced last year at the Norbury Park car parks has resulted in substantially fewer vehicles being parked in the car parks than anticipated.
The Liberal Democrats today saw success when their motion aimed at cutting the costs spent on interim staff at Surrey County Council was adopted. The motion, proposed by Cllr Chris Botten, and seconded by Cllr Will Forster was produced in reaction to recent news that Surrey was recruiting for another interim manager on a £90,000+ annual salary.
Two onerous responsibilities impacted on me at the beginning of this week. You may have seen the BBC programme in which Gareth Malone trains a choir for a concert at the school which sits beneath the hulk of Grenfell Tower. In a very moving film, he works to identify talent among the remarkably resilient and interesting young people, who lost many of their school friends in the fire. Among them is a young man with an obvious talent and imagination, but who finds school challenging because he has had to move to new foster parents; he has difficulty trusting people because as he gets to know them they seem to abandon him.
The 8th March 2019 marks International Women's Day across the globe, and we Liberal Democrats at Surrey County Council want to wish all the strong women across Surrey, and further, a very happy International Women's Day. At County Hall four of our nine Liberal Democrat councillors are women, and this is something we are proud of but hoping to further improve on in all future local elections.
Much of the depth of Surrey's financial crisis can be tracked back to the chaotic introduction of computer systems which an audit has revealed, among other things:
