The Local Government Boundary Commission have today announced the outcome of their boundary review of Surrey.

For sometime now, the Commission has been working with Surrey County Council to come up with a plan for how residents should be represented at County Hall. Currently one third of County Council seats have electoral variances of over 10% from the average – so a review was done to lower that figure to ensure as many Councillors as possible represent the same number of people.

The new boundaries – outlined in detail here – is what the next County Council election will be fought on in May 2013.  In future there will be 81 County Councillors (up 1 following an increase in population) with 7 County Councillors coming from Woking Borough (no change from before).  So each Councillor will represent about 11,000 residents.

Most County Council seats in both Surrey and Woking will stay the same including mine, however a change was needed in the Horsell seat (covering Horsell and Woodham) and the Central Woking seat (a long area covering Waitrose in Goldsworth Park, Woking Town Centre, Maybury and Sheerwater) since Horsell had too few voters and Central Woking had too many.

Too resolve the electoral inequality and maintain a link (or co-terminosity to use the official lingo) with Borough Council wards – I proposed the idea of having two new County seats in that part of the Borough.  Woking North, made up of Maybury, Sheerwater, Horsell East and Woodham.  The other being Goldsworth East and Horsell Village.

To my amazement, both Surrey County Council and the Boundary Commission back the idea!

Unfortunately, in order to have electoral equality one County Councillor cannot represent Goldsworth Park, or all of Horsell – the numbers just do not work. However, Goldsworth East and Horsell Village have a lot in common so work quite well together, Horsell’s local supermarket is Waitrose in Goldsworth Park and most school children in Goldsworth Park go to Woking High School in Horsell (I did when I lived in Goldsworth Park).  The same can also be said for the new Woking North seat, Bishop David Brown in Sheerwater takes in pupils from Horsell East and Woodham.

So the results of this review are very welcome.  All County Council seats in Woking will be co-terminous with all Borough Council seats, there will be electoral equality amongst County Councillors and one of my colleagues won’t be stuck representing a long and ridiculous area that stretches along a lot of the Borough.

Last week the Cycle Woking programme installed wheeling channels under the Woking Station subway that will make it easier for cyclists to use the subway.

The wheeling channels are fixed along one side of the subway steps to let cyclists wheel their bikes up and down the subway.  When I have used the subway as a cyclist or a pedestrian – not having wheeling channels was a real pain, you were too busy struggling to lift the bike up the stairs to look where you were going!  I personally was hit by school student who was struggling to carry her bike up the stairs and I imagine I have done the same when carrying mine.

The cheap and simple wheeling channels will stop all this.

I worked on getting these installed ages ago, but like many cycle related improvements – the installation of the channels was postponed when Cycle Woking was radically cut back.  A further delay, confirmed during a Council question time session in March, was caused when the local disabled group failed to turn up to a meeting during the consultation and demonstration exercise.

Surrey County Council has backed down and apologised after censoring emails about planned cuts to libraries.

Michael Alsop from the Surrey Library Action Movement, sent several emails to County Councillors campaigning against the Council’s decision to axe 10 small libraries unless volunteers take them over – in response the Council decided to block any of his future emails and treat them as spam.

The Council and the responsible Officer soon backed down after Hazel Watson on behalf of the opposition Lib Dems stated this action was clearly in breach of the Council’s own rules, let alone against basic common sense and democracy.

The village green application by the Rydens Way Action Group to register part of Rydens Way as a village green – with the protected status that comes with – has been rejected by the planning inspector.

Surrey County Council, as the Commons Registration Authority held an inquiry into whether this section of Rydens Way could be classed as a village green on 3rd and 6th October.

The inspector decided that since the application was so similar to the previous application made in 2008, the law prevents the Council from taking the application further – meaning the application has been rejected.

So were does this leave the development of Rydens Way by the Woking Borough Council owned-company?

Well, still up in the air to be honest, since the residents’ group are appealing the inspectors decision and the development of a section of Rydens Way (the Old Woking end) was going to happen regardless of the village green application.

What is still at stake is the section of Rydens Way between Woking College and Coniston Road.  Whilst the application for village green status was being discussed, no development could take place – I am unsure that the same legal protection exists for when a village green application is being appealed.  So I hope the developers allow the judicial review to conclude before starting building on this section of Rydens Way.

Surrey County Council has decided to drop their plans to turn nine libraries including Knaphill and West Byfleet into ‘Community Partnership Libraries’.

This U-turn, announced during the Cabinet meeting yesterday will see nine libraries (Ash, Caterham Hill, Frimley Green, Hersham, Horsley, Knaphill, Lightwater, Shepperton and West Byfleet) saved from the plans, but the original ten libraries (Bagshot, Bramley, Byfleet, Ewell Court, Lingfield, New Haw, Stoneleigh, Tattenhams, Virginia Water and Warlingham) will still be closed unless volunteers are found to run them.

However, some relief has been given the remaining ‘Community Partnership Libraries’ – they will now received one librarian for a fifth of their opening hours.

I have always been against the idea of ‘Community Partnering’ – this plan is clearly failing apart and County Hall is now understanding libraries run completely by volunteers is unsustainable.  It is also wrong to have two tiers within the library service, professional librarians should be at the heart of all of Surrey’s libraries.

The Conservative administration need to go further and withdraw their whole plan.  Throwing the ten threatened libraries a crumb of one member of staff for one fifth of their opening hours will do little to remove fears of a downgraded service and eventual closure.

There has been a lot of discussion recently about energy prices which is why I thought I should highlight one the initiatives from the Coalition Government that I fully support.

The huge rise in worldwide gas and oil prices is hitting people hard – that’s why the Lib Dems are helping people save money, stay warm and go green this winter.

These prices are worse in Britain because of the legacy of Labour rule.  They left people living in some of the coldest and draughtiest houses in Europe, the average British household spends more on energy than households in Sweden.

In Government, we have forced energy companies to spend much more on providing free and discounted home insulation to families across our area.  And from October 2012 the Lib Dem Green Deal starts – it will be the country’s biggest every home insulation programme, creating over 100,000 jobs and insulating millions of homes.

Less well off pensioners on the income guarantee will receive an extra £120 a year to help them stay warm – critically this will be automatically paid to the 600,000 poorest pensioners to ensure all those that need help, get it.  And this is on top of the £4.50 per week increase in the state pension and the regular cold weather payments.

The mix of investing in renewable energy and better insulation is the only viable decision the Government can make, it will help us all save money, stay warm and go green.

The Government has announced an extra £500 million will be given to local councils experiencing the greatest need in managing shortfalls in pupil places, Surrey County Council alone will received an extra £11,327,339 as a result of this.

This extra funding comes on top of the £800 million funding announced in December 2010 – double the normal annual level of support – which means that in 2011/12 a total of £1.3 billion will have been given to fund additional school places.

I am very pleased that the Government is investing an extra £11 million in Surrey’s school capacity.  This should ensure everyone gets a place at a good school, plus it is also welcome news for the jobs and businesses that depend on construction.

Behind the scenes the County Council and local schools are beginning to discuss how the extra school places required can be found, in September it is likely that three new classes will need to be created in Woking Borough – this money from the Government will go a long way in helping to meet that need.

The Woking Local Committee recently received a petition calling for a cycle lane to be installed on the A245 Parvis Road between Byfleet and West Byfleet following two cyclists losing their lives along this road in the last year.

The Local Committee has a strict (outdated in my view) way of dealing with petitions – they are accepted at one meeting, and then a report on what to do, if anything is presented at a following meeting.

In 1999, planning permission for a big office development on Parvis Road called the Broadoaks development was granted – when these new offices are built, the developer will also build a cycle lane on Parvis Road.  That should solve the problem – however the Broadoaks developer has gone into receivership, so we can’t see this development happening for many years.

The question for the Local Committee is – what should be done to make the road safe in the meantime?  My suggestion is to make the pavements along Parvis Road a shared use route so cyclists can get off the dangerous road.  There is not much pedestrian movement along on pavement so conflicts should be at a very minimum and the risks definitely don’t compare with two deaths in a year.  We will see what the rest of the Committee think at their December or March meeting.

The Conservative Cabinet at County Hall heard today that one of their own official surveys showed residents think they are out of touch.

The survey – part of the Council’s quarterly business report – said that only 39% of respondents believed that they could influence decisions affecting their neighbourhood, with 54% thinking the Council keeps them well informed.

These figures show just how out of touch the County Council is, as can be seen by the recent farce over on-street parking charges, the battle over library cuts and the former Council Leader’s tweets.

Way too often – decisions are taken by just one person or a small clique at County Hall, leaving most Conservatives Councillors and all opposition Councillors without much say.  Local Committees in the Boroughs and Districts hardly have any powers and are threatened that if they take a differing view, the Council will centrally overrule their decision.

After a messy civil war among the Conservative Group – the new Leader of Surrey County Council announced this week that the unpopular plan for higher and new on-street parking charges across the county will be abandoned.

The Tory Leadership tried to stick to their plan for a one size county wide system of on-street parking charges in a bid to raise £2.5 million.  However, a combination of no business case for their plans and a strong campaign against any newly imposed charges including a 26,300 signature petition organised by the Lib Dems – was eventually too much for Conservative County Councillors.

If these plans went ahead – locally it would have meant an increase the cost of parking in Zones 2 to 5 of the Controlled Parking Zone to £1 per hour (having already raised Zone 1) and then possibly introducing new parking charges outside shops in the villages and suburbs of the Borough like they were trying to do elsewhere in the County.

This u-turn at County Hall now means the Woking Local Committee can now decide on any changes to on-street parking charges.  I hope this means we can decide to keep charges the same and hopefully resolve local parking problems (for example outside the County Council’s own offices in Quadrant Court) whilst we are at it.