We find it somewhat ironic – even if it’s justified – that perhaps the most visible action of our year-old council in the town is to install new technology to relieve visitors of their money! (Today’s photo shows one of the new barriers being installed in Main Square car park.)
It’s impressive that this lamp-post in one of the service areas hasn’t collapsed completely.
We suspect that the county council deems the lamp-post to be on private land. We’ve tried reporting it via the SCC website, but it just ignores our input!
If you’ve walked along the High Street lately, you’ll probably have heard plenty of noise coming from the former TSB premises. We gather they’re being converted into a Subway restaurant.
It’s not the first time there’s been a Subway in the town centre, of course. Not so long ago there was a small branch tucked just inside the Square’s High Street entrance. Why it closed, we don’t know – but maybe it’ll have more success in the new location. It’ll certainly be a bit more noticeable there.
Surrey Heath’s population is rather older than that in the South East overall. The gap between us and the rest of the country is larger still. So, what does the shopping centre do? It removes the seats in Obelisk Way without, as far as we can tell, any warning to residents whose legs are also older than those elsewhere…
For years we’ve suggested that, like it or not, Camberley’s growth and economy will remain constrained by its poor rail service. Also, the current restrictions on new housing in the area – imposed to protect our key natural habitat – are sure to continue. Camberley must adapt to these challenges, or decline.
We see the town evolving already. Residents of care and retirement homes tend not to need good rail services. Nor are they generally a threat to our natural habitat; new purpose-built housing for them therefore has fewer restrictions placed upon it.
Camberley should respond to the needs of its older population. It should provide more public seats – not their unpublicised removal (which is where this post started, of course). It should eliminate street obstacles and tripping hazards, and install more-suitable loos and safer road crossings… Grow a positive image for the town; one that it badly lacks at present.
We recently received the third ‘edition’ of the borough council e-mailed newsletter to residents since Christmas. Last year we’d criticised the fact that the newsletter had been promised for quite a while – but not actually appeared – so we’re pleased to see it in our Inbox.
But we have a question. News in the social media spreads far and wide in a matter of hours, so what’s the value is of a newsletter that’s only issued every couple of months or so?Especially as the council website’s front page carries, on average, a new news item every two or three days.
Of course, there’s room for a website AND a newsletter – as long as they serve different purposes. But neither of them seem to have carried what ought to be a major news story – the confirmed departure of the council’s Chief Executive, and its immediate consequences. Unless Chief Executives are mere clones of each other, this changes the outlook! It could even affect the relationship between local residents and the administration…..
The strange thing is that the necessary near-term actions were described by the council leader over a month ago. At the time, the council’s employment committee was expected to agree the process for appointing an interim post-holder, ‘ideally from within’ the council soon after the middle of April. The interim appointee would be approved by the appointments sub-committee towards the end of the month, after ‘a rigorous selection process’.
Looking ahead slightly, an Extraordinary meeting of the Full Council to ratify the appointment is scheduled for tomorrow evening (though, if you look at the meeting’s agenda on the council website, you’ll learn virtually nothing of that!).
Which leaves our question unanswered. Does an occasional e-mailed newsletter have any place today, when communication is dominated by the social media? (And, as a supplementary question, how many residents make a habit of reading the ‘News’ on the council’s website?)
The former Fun Foto Factory shop in Princess Way has been closed for many months. For most of that time the shop window has displayed a notice inviting prospective tenants to contact the Square. Maybe it’s achieved results at last: the whole window was recently covered with sheets of paper. Usually this means that a new business is moving in – and we certainly hope that’s the case this time too!
Is this gate to the car park behind the council offices open at 8:00am on Saturdays?
It looked as if some substantial scaffolding was being erected around the end of the Atrium when we walked by the other day. We’re guessing (note, guessing) that the beds of aggregate that have been created at regular intervals around the building are there to support further substantial scaffolding, and that it’s going to be there for quite a while.
But what’s the purpose? The Atrium is – from memory – not yet twenty years old, so it shouldn’t need extensive external maintenance yet. Still, perhaps someone can tell us what’s happening – or, rather, why it’s happening?
Oh, and if you’re planning to go along that walkway between Roti Corner and My Froyoland, at the moment you can’t. Work on the scaffolding has blocked it off. Whether this is a long-term arrangement, we don’t yet know.
For quite a while after the Scene boutique closed in the Square, an impressive candelabra remained hanging in the window. But we never photographed it. Which is quite annoying, as it’s now been removed.
As a reminder, here’s the cover photo from the Scene’s seemingly inactive Facebook page.
Fingers crossed that a new tenant is on their way.
We don’t know WHO painted the white lines across the kerb by the unfriendly stretch of A30 slip road that catches unwary motorists, but we’re pretty sure it wasn’t done by anyone in an ‘official’ capacity.
It’s a disgrace that the parking ‘trap’ has been allowed to exist for so many years, and to be one of the county’s top earners from parking fines. Can YOU see any evidence in our photos that parking on that stretch of road is for permit-holders only?
The Camberley Eye 