Mole Valley sets up child-safety talking shop

Surrey's pointless panjandrum of the week is surely Andrew Crisp, who has the honour to be 'Surrey County Council's Executive Member for Schools and Communities', the spokesman for what is allegedly a new protection scheme for Mole Valley's children.

Called the Surrey's Safeguarding Children Board, until it delivers the Bugle will treat it as another pointless talking shop.

The aim of this ambitious amalgam of 'teachers, doctors, nurses, police and other organisations including sports clubs and leisure centres', is to combat 'bullying, truancy, domestic violence, sexual abuse and internet safety'.

There is, however, no mention of the greatest danger to local children, which is the speed at which teachers, doctors, nurses, the police, users of sports clubs and leisure centres ' and, it has to be said, the rest of us ' roar around the district in defiance of either speed limits or, come to that, consideration for others.

Local Heroine

Quite the opposite to Mr Crisp is 21 year old Vikki George who, though bedridden with myalgic encephalopathy (ME), has set up a website for seriously ill children. Now she's become the Reader's Digest Local Hero of the year for the site, called Post Pals (logo above left). Former Howard of Effingham student Vikki started the site, which allows people to send letters and presents to the stricken youngsters, four years ago.

According to BBC South, Vikki, who lives in Strathcona Avenue, Effingham, started the site with a grant from the Prince's Trust. She runs the site (to see it, click here)with three other ME sufferers, says the LAd.

The same applies to Eileen Morley, an activist who is known for her work in Fetcham but lives in Bookham. Eileen, 78, was the driver of the renovation of what is now Morley Court, Fetcham's only sheltered rented flats, in River Lane. Which is why they named them after her. A long and happy retirement, Eileen.

Thuggery

A useful child-safety scheme might have a point. The foreign desk reports that knife- and hammer-wielding thugs are abroad in Leatherhead and Ashtead.

Police are linking all five cases, says the LAd, though the number of thugs varies from one to two to four and the weapons used were knives in four cases and a hammer in another.

Though one offence against a man of 18 took place at four in the morning, another, against a 14-year-old who had his mobe taken, happened in the skate park outside the Leatherhead Leisure Centre at tea-time.

County consultancy fees

The Leisure Centre is also mentioned in a report that Surrey County Council has spent over '27m on consultancy fees in less than a year. In an excellent piece of work under the Freedom of Information Act, the LAd's Nicola Rider reports the delicious irony that '1.2m of it went on the Business Delivery Review, a scheme to save the SCC money.

'15m was spent on education consultants FourS. Think what the kids and their teachers could have done with that. More to the point, it dwarfs the amount needed to keep Bookham's Youth Centre open. The SCC says it has a statutory obligation to spend the sum on 'improvement projects', whoever it's paid to.

In a separate report Rider notes that Mole Valley paid three companies '26,000 to repair the new Dorking Sports Centre. Consultancy on the future of the Leatherhead Leisure Centre has cost '54,000 so far.

Therfield development

Last week and this week the LAd has carried reports about Surrey's plan to sell off a 1.2 hectares (3 acres) of derelict land at Therfield School, Leatherhead, for 90 homes and a road. In fact this plan has been in the offing for months, if not longer, and one local comment the Bugle hears is that, far from being 'playing fields', the land is idle and so marred by electricity pylons that no-one would want to live there.

But now parents led by Leatherhead parent Ian Whitlock have complained that Therfield won't get much of the sale price of 'several millions'. The decision is set for June, says the LAd.

Letters

An encouraging number of this week's letters support treating gypsies like everyone else. The Water Lane, Fetcham, gypsies are a particularly interesting case because, though they have attracted vile comments in the local Press ' often from people who have never met a gypsy ' hundreds of the locals whose children share schools with the travellers have signed petition that they be left alone.

Emma Manning ' not, note, 'name and address supplied' ' says the River Lane group invites anyone to go to their site and meet them: 'They don't bite. They want to become part of the local community,' she writes.

Dr A J McCaffry contributes in the same vein. The petition, he said, showed that people mattered more to Mole Valley residents than to the MVDC which was trying to evict them.


Articles updated February 12, 2009

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Cllr Aboud feels the heat

It's not often you think of the Advertiser's smudgers as 'papparazzi but page 3 of this week's LAd has that look about it.
Councillor Emile Aboud is pictured dodging the LAd's lenses as he emerged from a hearing at Redhill Magistrates' Court, where he pleaded 'not guilty' to a charge of common assault last Wednesday.
Exactly the opposite of the result he'd want on an election morning, you'd think, though the details of 67-year-old Cllr Aboud's alleged offence won't now be heard until August 11.
Aboud, Conservative councillor for Fetcham West, lives in Commonside, Little Bookham.
Abigail’s family plans new physio unit
Cllr Aboud’s neighbour, Abigail Witchalls, is to have a physiotherapy unit if plans for the new bungalow being built for her at the family home in Little Bookham Street are accepted. Just over a year after Mrs Witchells was attacked by a knife-wielding assailant in River Lane on April 20, 2005, her family has started a trust fund to raise money for equipment to help her recover, says the LAd.
Kin and kidney
Two other recoverers are Margaret and Derek Cripps: she because she’s just had a kidney transplant; he because he’s the donor. The two, who share a bloodgroup and a home in Raymeads Close, Fetcham, hope their example will encourage others to become donors.
Tragic oversight
A Parkinson’s patient died after a Dorking pharmacist, Richard Woodroffe, gave him drugs 20 times as strong as those prescribed, a hearing of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society heard. The LAd reports that the Woodcock pharmacy where Woodroffe, who lives in Oakbank Road, Fetcham, works had run out of Pergolide and made out an order for the stronger Celance instead.
Barn Hall history
The LAd devotes a whole page to the history of Bookham’s historic Barn Hall, already 150 years old when Arthur Bird JP, the then owner of the Eastwick estate, donated it to the village 100 years ago this year.
Expensive prang
Steven Crowther of Maddox Lane, Bookham, offered James Simpson ‘kindness and a roof over his head’. Simpson, it is alleged, returned these favours by taking Crowther’s £74,000 Porsche while he was away, crashing it, and staging a burglary to cover the offence. The case, heard at Redhill Magistrates’ Court, has been referred to the Crown Court, says the LAd.
Phone mast distress
Finally, Frank Holmested writes to the editor to object to the planned erection of a phone mast at Dorking cemetery, where members of his family are buried. The cemetery, overlooked by Box Hill, ‘has a charm that inevitably most cemeteries lack,’ says Mr Holested, and shouldn’t be spoiled by such intrusions.
It gives us no pleasure whatever to point out that the planners are less interested in charm than the commercial needs of the mast erectors.

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Bookham's Festival is Music Magic

'A huge success,' is how the LAd characterises the third Bookham Music Festival, held at and around St Nicholas Church from May 5 to 7. The programme began with pupils from the South Bookham Infant and Dawnay Primary Schools. That evening the festival continued with jazz from London's Zephyrus jazz quartet, St John's School, Leatherhead, jazz band, and jazz singer Clare Durling, and later performances came from St Theresa's preparatory school, local brownies and beavers, and Royal Academy of Music students the Bartholdy Piano Trio. The Horsley Church choir joined St Nicholas's own choir and soprano Tessa Wayne on Sunday with Capella, on piano, flute and cello, plus their own, unnamed, soprano.
The organisers plan another Bookham festival in 2008.

Therfield winners
Therfield School, Leatherhead, took the honours at the junior week of the recent Leatherhead Drama Festival, winning the Junior Sir Michael Caine Drama Award with their play Grimm Tales. 'They triumphed over strong competition,' said Nevil Michaels of The Theatre, in Leatherhead's Church Street.

Freedom plants
The LAd publicises a Dorking plant sale to raise money for Amnesty International from 10am to 12.30pm on Saturday, May 20. The event will be held at 26 St Paul's Road West, the home of organiser Vicky French. 01306 740332 if you need more info.

Riotous rescue
A recovery-vehicle operator was so drunk at the site of a car fire that when he tried to pull the car on to his vehicle it fell off, causing further damage, the LAd reports. Peter Jones, living in Fetcham digs, only got the job with National Rescue because, already under a two-year driving ban, he used his landlord's driving licence to apply for it. Redhill Magistrates Court gave Jones, now homeless and jobless because of the incident, a temporary reprieve from his travails by jailing him for six months.

Dioxins and Travellers
Two subjects dominate the LAd letters page. Dino Adriano of the Capel Action Group writes to protest about the bias of a previous LAd article about incinerators, very much a current concern at Surrey County Council. And the LAd devotes a further full page to letters about the travellers at River Lane, Fetcham.

Dino Adriano's letter cites an Environment Agency report of April 13 this year 'which reported that dioxin emissions from some incinerators could be up to eight times higher than previously thought.' This might be true but whether it's important depends not on the multiple of eight but on the absolute level of emissions. The Bugle is investigating waste management in Surrey and will publish a report soon.

In an articulate and, at times, moving letter Naomi Langley or Yarm Court Road, Leatherhead, describes how the authorities have ducked and dived round the legal issues surrounding the travellers' occupation at River Lane. Despite paying their Council Tax, for example, the travellers have not received the services from Mole Valley that this entitles them to. Their refuse collection has been unreliable and their post hasn't been delivered.

In other letters Colin Ward of Strathcona Avenue, Little Bookham, M White of Fetcham and, yet again 'name and address supplied' (where does he find the time to write all these letters?) inveigh against the travellers' illegal occupation of the land. Since their case is now going to judicial review it would seem a moot point whether their being in Fetcham is illegal or not, but given the choice of trusting a 'gypsy' or a council official the Bugle would side with a traveller any day.

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River Lane row 'back to square one'

The Surrey Advertiser (SAd) leads with the River Lane judicial review. The battle to clear the site, says the paper, ‘has rumbled on for nearly three years and cost local council tax payers thousands of pounds in legal fees.’ Despite a lengthy quote from MVDC director of services David Searle there is no report of the grounds for the judicial review or a quote from the travellers.

Cameras cut four in five deaths and serious injuries
Serious casualties have fallen 76 per cent on Surrey roads covered by speed cameras, says a report from the Surrey Safety Camera Partnership, reported in the SAd. Overall accident figures, including less serious injuries, at 17 Surrey speed-camera sites show a fall of 35 per cent. The result of all this is a saving not just in pain, grief and suffering, says the study, but in medical costs and lost output. It puts the figure at about £2.8 million a year.

County up in arms
They won’t like this in Dorking. Surrey County Council’s pension fund is investing massively in the arms industry, according to the SAd. It includes £4m invested in Rolls-Royce Aerospace, £1.8m in Haliburton and £1.3m in Northrop Grumman. All the figures to make you fume are on page 7.

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Leatherhead Advertiser May 18, Surrey Advertiser May 19

Bookham surgery in five-PCT merger
Bookham's Fairfield Medical Centre is part of a plan to merge five Surrey patient care trusts (PCTs), if a report in the Surrey Advertiser is right. The five are: Surrey North; Surrey South; Surrey Heath and Woking; Guildford and Waverley; and Bookham's own East Elmbridge and Mid-Surrey PCT.
Describing the move as 'a major shake-up,' the SAd says health secretary Patricia Hewitt plans to bring in the reorganisation by October. It will cut the number of PCTs from 303 to 152 and save '250m.
Tory Surrey County Council leader Nick Skellett has welcomed the move, but Guildford MP Anne Milton says it will be 'disruptive, destabilising and [make] patient care suffer.'

Legal spanner in Hewitt's NHS moves
Health secretary Patricia Hewitt's plans to move critical care from Epsom to St Helier have fallen foul of legal obstacles, says this week's Leatherhead Advertiser (LAd). The paper reports that a review of the Epson and St Helier NHS Trust's (ESNT's) four options for building the critical care centre at or near the St Helier site reveals flaws in each option.
Before Hewitt stepped in late last year, the Trust had planned to move critical care to Sutton. The move was part of the Better Healthcare Closer to Home proposals (could you make this up?) by the boards of the ESNT, the Sutton and Merton Primary Care Trust and the East Elmbridge and Mid-Surrey Primary Care Trust.
The critical care centre would be supported by a network of local care hospitals ' three new ones in Sutton, two in Merton and the existing local hospitals in East Elmbridge and Mid-Surrey.
Following the legal review, says local MP Sir Paul Beresford in the LAd, the move is 'back in the melting pot.' Actually, it shouldn't be. In a letter to Hewitt on May 11, his neighbour, Reigate Tory MP Crispin Blunt, reminded the health secretary that she had 'stated in December 2005 that she would be prepared to support the recommendation of Better Healthcare Closer to Home in locating the new critical care hospital at the Sutton site 'should it prove not to be possible to secure planning permission for the MOL opposite St Helier, in reasonable timescales'.'

'We can afford to do better'
On the LAd's Letters page Bookham resident Frank Holmested of Groveside says: 'The possible downgrading of Epsom hospital is, like the linking of our old age pension with the retail price index [instead of earnings], yet another economy measure and we are having far too many of them' We are a very wealthy country and these Government cut-backs should not be necessary.'

Expensive savings
On another page, the LAd points out that the KPMG turnround team put in to save East Surrey Hospital (Redhill) money has cost it '700,000 in fees in the first three months. Last month, reports the LAd, 400 jobs were axed at the Surrey and Sussex Healthcare NHS Trust of which the East Surrey is part, and more may follow. The Trust has debts of '58m and a trading deficit of '28m. What the report doesn't say is that the KPMG team has identified savings of '10m, though, according to the Trust's accounts, this includes 'reduction of capacity in some areas.'

'Fetcham says No to bookies'
Fetcham residents are up in arms about Coral's proposals to open a betting shop in the shopping parade on Cobham road, says the LAd. Coral has already lost an application for planning permission to move into the former premises of J&M Radio Services and change its use but it also needs a licence to operate, which it applied for at Redhill Magistrates' Court on Friday (outcome as yet unknown). The protesters say they have over 230 signatures on a petition. Neighbourhood bobby Simon Cox and two other officers allowed a small demo across the street from the shop, says the LAd.

Letters: Row rumbles on over River Lane Gypsies
On the LAd Letters page Jenny Moore of 'address supplied' writes to remind readers that the illegality the Water Lane gypsies have been accused of does not make them criminals: 'They have not committed a criminal act. Their issue is one of planning law.'
Less generous is 'Fetcham resident name and address supplied', who criticises the headmistress of the school the traveller children attend for writing to the LAd [See LAd May 4]. The headmistress, says anonymous, should be giving the pupils a clear understanding that good citizens don't defy the law and, if she wants to write to the paper, she should do it as a private individual, not as a headmistress. It'll be a long time before you see a sillier letter.
Finally, the Rev Tom Wilson writes a short but gripping letter about the gypsy life. The River Lane gypsies are not squatters, he says: they bought the land, and they own it. They pay council tax but receive nothing for it: 'Strange,' he writes, 'that Mole Valley District Council wants to get rid of them but is quite quick to take their money.'
Finally he notes that all the common land gypsies used to use when he was a boy has gone. There is nowhere for them to stop. The Rev Wilson should know what he's talking about. His address is Salvation Place, the gypsy settlement where Young St crosses the Mole.

Mickleham crash toll plummets
Speed cameras at Mickleham bends have cut the death and injury toll to 'three collisions involving minor injury' between April and December last year, says the LAd. There were 39 collions with 56 casualties in the three years to June 2004, according to the Surrey Safety Camera Partnership.

Tsunami heroine
Bookham social work manager Sue Lawrence has come back from a stint rebuilding a Sri Lankan village destroyed in the tsunami 17 months ago. The village of Wenamulla lost 62 people that day and 900 district children were orphaned. Sue Lawrence raised '3,000 in sponsorship and went out there in April to spend 12 days with 20 other volunteers for the Action Aid Habitat for Humanity Community Challenge.

Eight hours' pay, 57 minutes' work
The beat of the week has to be the Surrey Advertiser story about Carillion, a roadwork contractor for Surrey County Council (SCC). Investigators followed groups of Carillion workers at random through their working day. One group left their Esher depot at 8.36 am. When they returned at 3.40pm they had worked for just 57 minutes, according the the SCC's private report. They occupied the rest of the time stopping at the bank and the bakers (twice), drinking tea, reading the paper and chatting. The report estimated that a patch mended in Partridge La, Dorking, which Carillion had said it would fix for '200, cost the SCC '2,782.50, or '1,855 a square metre.

Tyting news
Guildford Borough Council's executive is to meet on Thursday to decide the future of Tyting farm, says the SAd. The executive may decide to lease it to Surrey Wildlife Trust, says the paper. For the background, click 'Local Conservation' in the Bookham Bugle news and views column.

Dragon disappearance
A '300 dragon statue has been stolen from the back garden of a house in Bookham's Sole Farm Avenue, says the LAd. The Surrey Advertiser has a fuller account. It names the dragon as Duncan, its orgins as Thai, and the owners as Laura Christie and her partner Tom Duncan. Laura had bought Duncan for Duncan's 50th birthday. Laura, disconsolate, has leafletted the area and scours ebay for wisps of smoke. If you see anything, Laura is on 01372 456975.

May 25 to 26: Hewitt refuses to answer pertinent questions about health provision

Health stories dominate this week’s papers. Great reporting on the front of this week’s Leatherhead Advertiser. ‘Nil by Mouth’ is the headline over Sam Munnery’s story that health secretary Patricia Hewitt has refused to answer the LAd’s five questions about the future move of critical services from Epsom to the St Helier hospital in Carshalton. Not only has she refused, but so has her press office, her constituency office in Leicester West and her office in the House of Commons.
There’s only one quibble with this kind of thing, which is that if there was a story in every refusal by officials to answer questions then the papers would be full of nothing else. On this occasion, though, you have to say the LAd’s questions are pertinent and should be answered.

NHS Trust chief leaves East Surrey Hospital
East Surrey Hospital chief executive Gary Walker has resigned three months before the end of his contract. Appointed in August last year, he says he will stay until a successor is found but no longer, reports the LAd. The Trust is £58m in debt and losing £44,000 a day, says the paper.

Bookham health care debts
The single primary care trust (PCT) to be formed from a merger of five PCTs to cover the whole of Surrey from this autumn will have debts of almost £10m from the off, says the Surrey Advertiser (SAd). That’s because three of the PCTs in the merger, including Bookham’s East Elmbridge and Mid-Surrey PCT, have combined debts of £9.5m though the other two. The merger will also affect ambulance services in Surrey, Sussex and Kent.

Big Jim to chair Surrey Police Authority
After two years as Surrey County Council executive member for community safety, Councillor Jim Smith (Conservative, Bookham and Fetcham West) has been elected chairman of Surrey Police Authority. He says he will oppose the proposed merger between the Surrey and Sussex police forces.

Effingham Murder
George Stephens of Effingham has been charged with the shooting of John Mitchell, an Effingham horse trade and father of five, in February last year, reports the LAd. Stephens was remanded in custody at Staines Magistrates’ Court to appear at the Old Bailey on August 25.

Mystery mains burst
Residents are fuming about a burst water main which robbed their taps of the precious liquid. The Sutton and East Surrey helpline was, er, swamped with calls as a result. Only one problem with the LAd’s story – it omits to tell us where this happened.

Fetcham bookies – decision delayed
Redhill Magistrates’ Court decided to adjourn its hearing of Coral’s application to open a betting shop in Fetcham. The application has been opposed by some residents (story below).

Hawks Hill tragedy
An elderly driver died at the wheel of his car when it went down a grass bank and hit a garden wall, says the LAd. The collision happened at Hawks Hill, Fetcham, at about 10pm. The man, 74, from Cranleigh was pronounced dead on arrival at Epsom Hospital.

Letters – more about River Lane
More support for – and more antagonism against –River Lane’s gypsies surfaces on the letters page of this week’s LAd. Hubert Carr of Leatherhead notes that the settlement is not ‘illegal’, as so many have described it, but ‘unauthorised’, which is somewhat different. They are entitled to camp in the Green Belt in certain circumstances, says Mr Carr.
But Stephen Lawson of Lodge Road, Fetcham, takes a different view. Those who support the travellers are ‘viewing their life through rose-tinted glasses,’ says Mr Lawson. While he’s at it, he has a crack at them for ‘doubtless’ supporting the immigration ‘of every man and his dog into this country regardless of who or whence they came’.
Attitudes to travellers aren’t necessarily a litmus test of attitudes to immigration, as if that were at all relevant, but Mr Lawson goes on to suggest that, if the gypsies live in mobile homes they should be mobile and move on. Not a penetrating insight but one that, on the whole, makes you glad not to live next to Mr Lawson.
On another page the LAd’s Nicola Rider interviews three of the camp’s supporters: Emma Manning, Gillian Blackley and Jenny Moore, all connected with All Saints’ School. Gillian says the council’s efforts to evict the travellers were costing money that could be better spent. Emma had made friends with Gypsies as a schoolgirl and thought she ought to help the gypsy families to stay.

Incinerator blues
Denis Loretto, that charming Ulsterman who is chairman of Mole Valley Liberal Democrats, has a go at ex-councillor Julian Shersby in the LAd letters page for being a sore loser in the recent district elections. Buried in Loretto’s letter is a salient point about local Conservative contradictions over an alleged plan to put an incinerator at Capel.
Shersby, the only Tory to lose his seat to a Lib Dem, complains he lost because the Lib Dems tarred him with a pro-incinerator brush – simply on the grounds that Shersby’s higher-level colleagues on the Surrey County Council were responsible for nominating Capel as a favoured site for the incinerator.
You have to admit that the County Council Tories’ approach to incineration made life impossible for any Tory district-council candidate for the Capel ward. The icing on the cake fr the Lib Dems is that it never looks good when local representatives of any party say that what their party is doing at County or, for that matter, Government level is nothing to do with them.
The Surrey Advertiser reports that the Green Party has now joined the fight against the incinerator, urging Surrey County Council to switch its policy to one of zero waste. ‘The sustained fears of people living near potential sites and beyond should be as real and weighty a consideration as research into waste itself.’

Volunteers needed to save lives and limbs
Several features in the latest issue of the Bookhams Bulletin stand out. One is the photo story on the engineering work at Bookham Tunnel, next to the station. The article tells you why the work is necessary and what needs to be done.
Another is editor Martin Warwick’s history of the Old Barn Hall, again lavishly illustrated.
A third is the article about Community Speedwatch, a project to slow drivers down by monitoring their speeds and, when necessary, reporting speeding drivers to the police. The scheme operates throughout Mole Valley, in Brockham, Westcott, Box Hill and Abinger.
Speedwatch needs volunteers. If you’re interested ring Neil Walker on 451 582, or email him at neil.a.walker@dsl.pipex.com.
There’s a new look for this issue of the Bulletin, with the promise of more changes. First a move to white paper instead of green, and Martin Warwick says there will be colour in future issues. More info on the website for the Bookham Community Association, which publishes the Bulletin:

June 1 to 2

St Nicholas levels parents’ grave

June 8 to 9

’Police not interested in £5,000 theft’
In May Hylands Garage reported to the police that an employee had pocketed more than £2,000 worth of petrol sales to cash customers, according to a report in the Leatherhead Advertiser. The employee assigned the missing petrol to account customers using forged signatures. The police replied that they had investigated the matter and would take no action.
Garage owners Mervyn Rice and Michael Dade wrote back to ask what investigations the force could have carried out without interviewing either of them. The owners told the LAd they were furious: ‘It would be nice to think this man would at least be investigated and possibly prevented from doing the same thing again.’
The eventual tally of stolen fuel turned out to be £5,433. Quite extraordinary.

Who took the ‘Great’ out of Bookham?
Heather Billinghurst of Downlans Road asks on the LAd’s letters page why ‘Great’ has been left out of the village’s name on the A246 approaches to Great Bookham. ‘Please,’ she pleads, ‘can everyone write to the council and demand that the Great is put back.’

Wandering nine-year-old
A nine-year-old with a hearing aid who went missing from Little Bookham at 3.30pm on May 31 was found three hours later at Woking station, the LAd reports. Police and helicopters were involved in the search.

Bookham pair triumph at Chelsea Flower Show
World class flower arrangers Sue Slark and Jan Clarke won gold medals for their ‘dream time’ flower arrangement at Chelsea this year. The pair had entered 10 years ago and won gold then too.

Road deaths cap triple Surrey Council failure

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June 15 and 16

June 8 to 9:

Sutton and Surrey Water is to allow ‘a limited amount of water’ to 150 local sports clubs to treat their ‘specialist playing surfaces’, reports the SAd’s front page. As the paper points out, however, the message was confused by the company’s decision to lower the borehole at its Elmer works at Hawks Hill, Fetcham, to reach further down into the water table. A week earlier (http://www.waterplc.com/WaterPlc/news/pr/2006/n20060608.html) SSW had allowed those who wanted it to collect undrinkable water from a small spring south of Oxted. The water was flowing away unused, said the company, and would be made available to those who needed it to water surfaces too large for watering cans.

Beresford springs to the rescue
Mole Valley MP Sir Paul Beresford has sprung to the aid of a Bookham window cleaner, says the paper’s front page. Lowes Cleaning Services, based in Newenham Road, uses a telescopic pole through which it pumps water to clean windows up to 60ft from the ground. The device uses up to 10 litres of water to clean a three-bedroom house. Sir Paul has written to Sutton and Surrey Water to ask it to consider relaxing the drought order for Lowes and companies like it.

Surrey sex fiends
Surrey appears to have more that its fair share of sex fiends, if a story in the SAd is to be believed. Stop it Now!, a national anti-paedophilia help line, reports that Surrey accounts for 6.8 per cent of its calls though it has only 1.7 per cent of the population. The line was set up for men and women worried about their sexual thoughts towards children and for parents and others worried about or about the sexual behaviour of children or other adults. Almost half the calls came from abusers or potential abusers, says the charity, adding that the higher number of Surrey callers was probably because the charity had a higher profile in the county.
Let’s hope so. The charity’s report also notes that one in five girls and one in nine boys below 16 are sexually abused. More information on stopitnow.org.uk or 0808 1000 900.

Hot air over Surrey waste plan
Surrey’s incineration plans have caused dissention among the county’s 11 district and borough councils, says the SAd. The plans, reported here on http://bookhambugle.2day.ws/bookhambugle/section/CountychangestackonLeatherheadincinerator/ , attract opposition from Jenny Wicks, Guildford Borough Council’s (GBC’s) Conservative lead member for the environment. Surrey should not be using incineration to deal with the waste left over after recycling, she says, since it might reduce the amount of recycling. The county should use anaerobic digestion and mechanical biological treatment instead.
A note from GBC’s executive members says mass burn incinerators can’t work cost-effectively below a certain volume, so they become more expensive as recycling is increased.
Woking BC is also worried about Surrey’s plan. It ‘remains opposed to any policy that could lead to the construction of large-scale mass burn incinerators.’
Surrey Heath BC, however, accepts the need for incineration. Elmbridge hasn’t yet made its mind up.
The SAd’s letters page continues the argument with a letter from Sarah Di Caprio, the Lib Dem Surrey County Councillor for Guildford South East. ‘The waste plan… was certainly not ‘technologically neutral’, as the Conservatives maintained, as it gave great emphasis to incineration and very little interest shown in other forms of residual waste treatment…’ In five years time, she points out, the incineration technology Surrey wants to pursue may well be superseded.
The tories are In disarray over incineration, she claims. One councillor, Tony Booth, is a member of both GBC and SCC. As the former he is against incineration but as the latter he is in favour of it, she says.

Village Day hits the front page
Bookham’s Village Day (June 17) gets top coverage in both the Leatherhead Advertiser and the Surrey Advertiser. The SAd’s front page story is about how pageant queen Chantelle Hooley, who led the parade in an Edwardian costume and carrying a union flag, was supposed to be riding in a 100-year-old vintage car. But the car broke down at Clandon on its way to Bookham, so Chantelle had to walk.
The LAd’s back page carries five pictures. Its longer report omits the car incident but notes that Bookham Community Association BCA chairman Keith Slark puts the amount the day raised for the Barn Hall’s running and improvement costs at up to £6,000.

Mystery of the missing moggies
Top local story in the LAd this week is the page 2 item about a spate of cat disappearances. Six cats are known to have disappeared from the Bookham area in the past few weeks, says the paper, and one owner, Anne Little of Vicarage Close, has lost two. Helen Wawman of the Garstons found her cat’s collar lying unfastened on a nearby pavement a few days after it vanished. Another cat disappeared from The Mount, Fetcham. Speculation as to the cause ranges from abduction to poison put down for foxes. A local vet suggests the locals look in their sheds, as cats were often locked in at this time of year.

Honours for Rainbow Trust founder and police stalwart
Bernadette Cleary, the Fetcham woman who founded the Rainbow Trust, now based in Cleeve Road, Leatherhead, in 1986 was awarded an OBE in the Queen’s birthday honours list, reports both the the LAd and the SAd. The Rainbow Trust helps the families of youngsters with cancer and other life-threatening illnesses. She opened the Rainbow House respite centre in Eastwick Drive, Bookham, in 1990.
Surrey Police archivist Mrs Gerry Middleton-Stewart of Greenacres, Bookham, was awarded an MBE. She created the Surrey Police Museum four years ago and has written a history of the force, reports the SAd.

Abigail, one year on
Local crime victim Abigail Witchalls visited church for the first time since being knifed just over a year ago, reports the LAd. The paper was, in turn, reporting a News of the World picture story at the weekend.

Noise on the line
Bookham’s telephone exchange opposite the Barn Hall is drawing unwelcome attention to itself, says a story in the LAd. An alarm has been keeping local residents awake for up to 14 hours a day, says the paper. New Conservative councillor Janette Purkiss, who lives in The Park, says the alarm ran day and night for two weeks.
The building houses equipment belonging to both BT and the O2 mobile phone company.

Dawnay mass skip
The Dawnay School seems to have a knack for attracting publicity. And why not? Following its campaign for fewer car journeys to school (June 1 to 2, below), it staged a mass skip-in to raise funds for the British Heart Foundation and mark the start of the school’s healthy living week. Other events during the week included preparing healthy meals and learning to respect the planet and its resources, says the LAd. The paper also reports that the school has been awarded a Gold Activemark for its efforts to encourage pupils to take up sport.

June 29 to 30:

Residents in Greville Court and Durleston Park Drive, Bookham, breathed a sigh of relief when Mole Valley council told them that after independent tests by ESI, their gardens could be declared safe, says the LAd.
Two years ago the government used the 1990 Environment Act to make Mole Valley inspect its district for contaminated land. That’s when it emerged that some of this area might be contaminated by benzopyrene, a cancer-causing product of incomplete combustion. It’s found coal tar, vehicle exhaust fumes (especially diesels), tobacco smoke, charbroiled food and burnt toast. The paper says that, without this all clear, residents would have faced their gardens being excavated and replaced.
The outcome now eliminates uncertainty for the residents, says head of environmental health Mark Wilkinson. That may be putting it too strongly.

Youth centre: the saga goes on
The Effingham Learning Partnership, a group of 12 Effingham-area schools, is to consider running classes at the Bookham youth centre, says the LAd. The group will carry out a survey of possible interest in its services over the next few weeks.
The paper notes that the ELP plans local family learning projects ‘in parenting and cookery with a link to the healthy schools initiative.’

Danger at Dawnay crossing
Traffic speeds along the main A246 through Bookham are posing danger to South Bookham schoolchildren attending the Dawnay school, even though there’s a pedestrian crossing to help them, says a picture story in the LAd.
Five year old Lewis Turner is pictured near the crossing, whose red light is now covered by foliage, the paper reports. His mother, Theresa Turner of Broderick Grove, reported the obstruction on June 12, she says, and has threatened to keep Lewis at home unless the trees are trimmed. She complains that, though the speed limit is 30 mph, most drivers do 50 mph. On one occasion she had to pull Lewis and a friend out of the path of a driver who sped through the light at red.
The highway authority, Surrey in this case, said ‘a team will be sent to investigate in due course.’ Not much to investigate, you’d think, since the LAd’s photograph shows clearly what the problem is.

Now it’s Little Bookham’s turn
A few weeks after Great Bookham celebrated the centenary of the gift of the Barn Hall to the village, Little Bookham held a street party for its own village hall, built in 1906. The aim was to raise some of the £60,000 needed for repairs and other changes to a building that, according to the LAd, ‘has not had any significant restorative work done during its lifetime.’ The fund is now at £34,000 after grants from Surrey and Mole Valley. The director of the restoration project is David Ellis, who said the hall needed a new kitchen and toilets, roof repairs and better heating.

Photo-Me threatens move if denied planning permission
Photo-Me International has submitted plans to redevelop its site near Bookham station at a cost of £4m. But the company has warned that it will move the business outside Mole Valley if its plan is not accepted, reports the LAd.
The threat could be real. More and more manufacturing and other companies now operate from eastern Europe and the far east where labour is cheaper. If Photo-Me International did leave it would cost Bookham 70 jobs, says the paper.
Photo-Me’s warehouse was partly destroyed by fire in December 2004. The cause was never established.
From the paper’s report, the redevelopment will be a joint venture with Bookham Tyres, which has been planning a new tyre depot for some time, and whose premises back on to the Photo-Me site.

Another win for South Bookham School
South Bookham School has won an £850 grant from Surrey to build a new outdoor teaching area. It will be used for woodland seating in the shape of a hexagon, reports the LAd. See also front page item, ‘Surrey tackles young mental illness’.

Dodgy dental dossier
A really slow news day at the Surrey Advertiser. It leads with the disappearance of NHS dentists. A local survey reveals that over three quarters of them ‘believed the new government contracts would make dental health worse and drive more of them to abandon NHS work entirely,’ says the paper.
Heavens. And bang to rights, you might think – we’ve all suffered torments at the hands of the dental refuseniks, after all.
But the ‘survey’ was conducted by none other than your very own Sir Paul Beresford, tory MP and, as it happens, dentist. His credibility as an independent surveyor of anything to do with the NHS, dentistry, or much else, come to that, is questionable. Last time the Bugle’s editor visited his own dentist’ practice it was taking on NHS patients. See 'NHS Dentists' link in right hand column of Bugle front page.

Bookham pensioner gets rough end of Mrs Rooney’s tongue
The lead in the Leatherhead Advertiser (LAd) is Wednesday’s Guardian story about Ed McGrath, the Bookham man who paid a council tax bill for Derby pensioner Pauline Rooney. The Surrey Advertiser (Sad) also reports the story on an inside page.
Rooney’s reasons for refusing to pay are unclear. At first it seemed she wanted to signal to the Derby authorities her displeasure with the state they had allowed her neighbourhood to decay into. Then she sounded off about starvation in Africa.
Feistiness is such a rare quality that the Bugle salutes it wherever it shows itself. And Ed McGrath counts as a survivor too. Where would be without their like? But it’s likely that when Ed has read all the weekend’s papers have to say about Pauline, he may regret he acted so hastily.

Mansard to appeal after Lower Road development is turned down
Mansard Country Homes is to appeal against Mole Valley’s February decision to refuse it permission to build four detached houses and two bungalows in place of two houses on Lower Road, the LAd reports.
On another page it reports Old School Properties’ failure to win planning consent to demolish three houses in Sole Farm Road to build three detached and three terraced houses and 10 two-bedroom flats with parking. The council bowed to the 125 objectors to the scheme. Earlier Old School Properties had appealed after Mole Valley refused permission for a different application to build 13 homes on the same site.

Anonymous complaint about Fetcham partying
‘Name and address supplied’ (Naas) adorns the LAd’s letter page once again, this time with a complaint about amplified music in a garden near the Lower Road and Kennel Lane junction. The party went on till half past midnight, says our correspondent.
No joke, either. Though several streets away from the source, the writer’s windows rattled and their walls vibrated.
Amplified noise is the curse of the age. The tempting remedy is a crack Mole Valley anti-noise squad armed with rocket propelled grenades.
Of more practical help, however, is that Naas has found a couple of numbers you can call if the same happens to you. The Bugle has put them on the front page under ‘Information’ – click ‘Noisy neighbours’.
One noise problem Mole Valley seems powerless against, however, is the ‘900sub’. If you click the link you’ll notice that Mole Valley will tackle noise from ‘a neighbour's home, a local business or factory, or noise from stationary vehicles and equipment in the street.’ It has no remedy for noise from cars equipped with 900 watt sub-woofers and other such anti-social equipment.

July 6 and 7:

Surrey refuses to restore ‘exceptional’ free school transport
Surrey’s (SCC’s) Conservative executive committee has rejected pleas to restore free transport for some local children after a three year gap, reports the Surrey Advertiser. The reason given is that parents were bending the rules to get free transport to preferred schools rather than those nearest them.
The rules are set out in legislation that children between five and eight living two or more miles from their nearest school, and pupils from eight to 16 who live three or more miles from their nearest school qualify for free transport.
Under 44 ‘exceptional transport arrangements’ scrapped from 2002 onwards, some free transport was provided for children not attending their nearest school. They included nine who did not have a means of transport to their nearest school, among them pupils from Effingham who attended St Thomas or Canterbury Catholic (VA) (Primary) even though St Peter’s Catholic Primary or St Joseph’s Catholic Primary were their nearest Catholic schools. In all, these and other exceptional arrangements covered 141 Surrey children who now have to travel at concessionary fares on locally hired coaches of around £100 a term, half price for siblings.
Surrey’s ostensible case for not restoring the arrangements is to treat all Surrey students uniformly. But there is also the small matter that Surrey made £37,606 from the fares this academic year and the fares are index linked. If free transport were reinstated for the nine above-mentioned cases, Surrey would ‘lose’ £17,000 a year.

'Crimewave' latest'
The Surrey Advertiser fillets a Surrey Police press release to report that over the recent knife amnesty 47 weapon-type knives were handed in in west Surrey, more than in any other Surrey Police division. North west Surrey scored 30, east Surrey 22 and north Surrey one. By a wider definition of knife, east Surrey scored 428, Woking 402 and Guildford 197.
The Leatherhead Advertiser’s (LAd’s) version is that, of the 1,350 knives or sharp weapons handed in to Surrey Police, 143 landed on the desks at Mole Valley’s Leatherhead and Dorking police stations. Of these 86 were domestic knives, 48 ‘non-domestic’ knives and nine were ‘weapons’. The LAd quotes Superintendent John Boshier of east Surrey from a press release as saying Surrey was the safest county in the country for violent crime. Supt Boshier is seen above with a trophy from the Surrey haul.
The LAd’s headline is ‘143 knives handed in, but is it enough?’ There’s no answer to that, but there is an answer to how many police cells there are in Surrey: 62. Is that enough?, you might wonder. The figure is revealed in a report about world cup football violence in the county after England crashed out of the competition. All the cells were full, reports the LAd.

Bugle rethinks editorial stance on maggoty bins
A murraine of maggoty bins has revisited Mole Valley, reports the Leatherhead Advertiser (LAd). Merrylands Road is the site of one infestation, the paper reports. Beth Townend says the flies are so thick she can’t open the windows in front of her house.
Beth, who has two children in nappies, is doing all the right things. She composts and recycles as much as she can, so the green bin is full by the end of two weeks. But so is the black bin. Her waste is double-bagged and she doesn’t leave food out before binning it. But the problem persists, and the hose-pipe ban rules bin-washing out too.
Other reports come from Dorking and Leatherhead but, in the light of Beth Townend’s testimony, the Bugle has rethought its maggoty-bin policy. There may be something in it after all.

Long-lived of Leatherhead
It is the best of places; it is the worst of places. Mole Valley is one of the healthiest places to live in the UK, says the LAd, reporting the Department of Health’s 2006 health profile. People living in Bookham, north or south, share a significantly higher life expectancy than the English average, according to the profile. That means lives are quite a bit longer here than could be accounted for by statistical quirks. Sadly the same cannot be said of the denizens of Westcott, which nestles at the foot of Ranmore Common between Shere and Dorking. Westcott dwellers can expect to live shorter lives than statistical quirks can take credit for, and no-one knows why. When the LAd phoned Westcott Village Association chairman Tim Gowing to ask him, he responded that he was sitting next to a 100 year old who, as far as he could tell, looked healthy enough. Perhaps it’s the traffic.

Fuss over Fetcham Splash
Fetcham Residents’ Association (FRA) chairman Ed Tims is pictured lurking furtively in bushes near the Mole at Fetcham in last week’s LAd. The reason? His complaint about the Fetcham Splash, an island in the river crossed by the River Lane Fetcham to Leatherhead footpath. The island is a lovely spot, offering the tiniest beach you’ve ever seen, but its glory days are long over, according to the FRA. Their talking point ‘for some time’, reports the paper, has been the island’s state of neglect. ‘People used to picnic there,’ says Tims, ‘and paddle in the river.’ Now it’s no longer habitable, he says. The nettles are over six foot high.
As usual it’s the council’s fault. They won’t cut the grass because they only manage half the island and there are rare plants there. The LAd reports an Mole Valley spokesman as saying that there is no real reason to cut it back.

’Leatherhead needs a residents’ association’
Leatherhead resident Roy Allen reports a stitch-up in the LAd’s letters column. He’s writing to complain about a pending decision to ban private street parking in the town’s two main streets between 8am and 6.30pm. The police, it turns out, are under the impression that a long-standing ban operates between 10am and 4.30pm but, in any case, have never enforced it – it’s a low priority. So Surrey County Council’s (SCC’s) ‘transportation department’ is sending in the wardens to do it instead. A final decision will be made, privately, says Roy Allen, by MVDC chairman Councillor Tim Hall, SCC councillor Jim Smith and the ‘transportation’ manager in private cahoots.
Mr Allen’s complaint is that nobody has asked any Leatherhead residents about it. The following day’s Surrey Advertiser (SAd), however, reports that the Mole Valley local committee – which involves representatives of the SCC and Mole Valley, will hold talks with objectors to the transportation department’s proposals.
The Bugle’s view is that any organisation which, like the SCC, is so careless with language that it prefers ‘transportation’ to ‘transport’ has to be treated with the utmost suspicion. And when, as on the SCC’s website, it insists on using American date order it is definitely up to no good. But his answer, a residents’ association for Leatherhead, is a rotten idea, as we in Bookham know all too well. Unless its officers are elected by secret ballot, all its meetings are open to the public and it publishes full records of them it will be worse than the organisations it’s supposed to be up against.

Pat on the back for Raj
Fetcham Tandoori owner and Lib Dem district council candidate Raj Haq has received a Silver Caterer of the Year award from the Bangladesh Caterers’ Association, says the LAd.
One of five winners, Raj won the award for his community and charity work with Save the Children and other organisations.

No parking room at Rusper
Rusper golf club has been denied long-sought for planning permission to extend its car park, says the Surrey Advertiser (SAd). The course was set up in 1991 and granted places for 71 cars. The club now wants to increase this by 100. The current Surrey standard, said Mole Valley inspector Alan Rugman, only allows 72. And the club’s appeal for a new lodge house was also rejected, on the grounds that it would ‘harm the character and appearance of relatively open countryside.
This planning inspector is a man the Bugle could do business with. Where was he when Mole Valley recommended acceptance of the National Trust’s plan for 370 cars on the top of a hill at Polesden Lacey?

Cash for the socially excluded
The charity Surrey Community Action (SCA) is to make grants of up to £2,000 to struggling community projects, according to the Surrey Advertiser (SAd). The five groups who qualify are black or other ethnic minorities; travellers; asylum seekers; members of minority faiths; and anyone excluded socially from rural communities. The last category could be expensive for the SCA. If you think you qualify phone Sarah Clarke 01483 459292 or email sarahc@surreyca.org.uk.

Help for the self-employed
If you’re starting your own business or already self-employed you might benefit from a new Dorking-based service. Surrey Enterprise Gateway is funded by the South East England Regional Development Agency (SEERA) to offer free advice, says the paper. It opened in Curtis Road after a campaign by Lib Dem district councillor Caroline Salmon.

More on Photo-Me
The Surrey Advertiser (SAd) follows up last week’s LAd story (below) about Photo-Me International’s seeking planning permission to rebuild its site opposite Bookham station. The current office building will be retained, says the SAd. The rest of the site will include a three-storey office block and a single story factory and warehouse.

Water consumption falls
Mole Valley consumers have heeded the call to use less water, says the SAd. In the first full calendar month since Sutton and East Surrey Water was given a drought order, consumption fell 15 per cent over the same period last year to 5.7 million gallons a day.