The manner in which Dorking is being treated by the councillors on MVDC is nothing short of appalling - I should qualify that statement since the town's councillors (all LibDems - and no, I'm not a LibDem supporter) have constantly opposed the Conservative's controlling group's more silly plans - like a £1 charge on anyone using the two car parks at the eastern end of the town, i.e. Dorking Halls and the council staff car park (used free of charge by the staff Monday to Friday). The stupidity of this charge is revealed by the fact that most of the monet will be spent on wages for a parking enforcement officer - I believe in another language that's a good old fashioned parking warden.
Nowhere else in the Mole Valley is there a charge for evening parking - in fact just about everywhere in Surrey is free in the evening. What has Dorking done to deserve this rotten treatment? Why is MVDC prepared to invest in Leatherhead and Ashtead - in fact just about anywhere in the district except Dorking? Why, given the dreadful state that Dorking's town centre is in, did the council decide to withdraw funding of about £6,000 for town centre floral decorations? One could go on and on...
Isn't it about time the town's traders demanded a meeting with MVDC and an explanation of the apparently unfair treatment?
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As a long-term Conservative voter, I was appalled by the fatuous comments by the Conservative councillor from Ashtead (can't remember his name) who was quoted as saying that because more evening tickets had been purchased than signatures collected on the petition, he would interpret that as support for evening charges. Logic like that leaves me speechless. I was reminded recently of the Benjamin Franklin quote: "Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote."
ReplyDeleteDorking is a very much unarmed Lamb and the Conservative councillors seem to have decided to sacrifice it. Unfortunately, the demography and affluence of the area give the Conservatives a stranglehold that Stalin would have envied.
More sinister was the recent suggestion voiced either on here or the Cockerel's blog that the Conservatives were deliberately choking Dorking as a sick political move to embarrass the LibDems. If this is true it is scandalous.
Dougie
Apparently the council was told in a report that putting up the parking charges would result in 5% less footfall. These people are actively working against the retailers.
ReplyDeleteShrewdSonja
Isn't it about time the town's Chamber of Commerce stuck its head above the parapet and did something to benefit its member who pay subscriptions for help at times such as these?
ReplyDeleteAlso how about the LibDems councillors meeting with the town's traders who here their views - one could invite the Conservatives along too!
Pepin
I hear that the BT building next to MVDC offices is becoming redundant.
ReplyDeleteIs MVDC talking to Sainsburys about selling them the Pippbrook offices so that a bigger superstore can be built in its place and it will then incorporate a new set of offices for the council together with a cash sum for the coffers.(This is called planning gain).
If this is a fact then MVDC and SSC is about to decimate Dorking town centre like they did with Leatherhead,which has never recovered from the ill conceived planning.
The Dorking Chamber of Commerce only has 3 to 5 retailers as its members.
Lets now look at the latest planning application that MVDC has approved for the Harley Davidson site.
According to the latest copy of the Dorking Directory 2009/10 we have 88 eating places of various descriptions in the town.
SO WHY DID THESE COUNCILLORS APPROVE ANOTHER TWO RESTAURANTS???
WAS IT ANOTHER BACK ROOM AGREEMENT SO THE TOWN CENTRE MOVE'S CLOSER TO THE PIPPBROOK SITE.
How many councillors have any experience and knowledge about running a business and creating employment, from what I have witnessed and heard they are incapable of doing so.
I have to-day email MVDC and asked the following information under the FREEDOM OF INFORMATION ACT 2000.
"Please supply the names and ages of all councillors in MVDC together with there occupations now and in the passed 30 years"
I have asked for this in this way as I suspect that many could be retired civil servants of some kind or another and have no knowledge of the real world of business.
Leslie Gilbert
I have to say, when I moved here and heard about the plans for Sainsburys & St Martins Walk I was pretty unhappy. When you consider how the town appears to be slowly wilting retail-wise and the benefits Morrisons appears to bring to Reigate then I could be convinced that a well planned supermarket could bring similar benefits to Dorksville. Icing on the cake could be that the politicians would piss off to Leatherhead and Ashtead.....
ReplyDeleteHi Downwind.
ReplyDeleteI agree. I run the Lemon Tree shops in Reigate and Dorking and I have to say that Morrisons brings a huge benefit to our shop there. I suspect large numbers of our customers park in Morrisons for up to two hours and after doing their grocery shopping in the supermarket visit the High Street shops such as ours.
However, this only works because of the proximity of the supermarket. If Sainsburys built at Pippbrook, it wouldn't help us at all, but St Martins may.
Parking is the key.
Jim
Every day Dorking loses more and more shops and yet the idiotic moronic councillors continue to stick by their evening charges of £1 and their overpriced daily parking charges. Hello....the UK is in the grip of a horrendus downturn and Dorking probably won't ever recover from this latest downturn. In the last couple of weeks, DAPA the musical instrument shop has closed on South Street and now Hi-Life (the surf, skateboard) shop in up for let with Huggins Edwards and Sharp. Dorking at this present rate would not be able to compete with the likes of Wallington or Chessington nevermind Reigate or Epsom! The Conservative councillors should be ashamed of themselves for destroying another town in Mole Valley and many thanks for all the propoganda material that popped through my postbox this morning trying to explain my new rate of council tax (you have saved me a whopping £4+ on my annual council tax bill!!!) Just wondering how does much Mole Valley spend on its propoganda literature on an annual basis considering the council have saved £6,000 for not putting up the hanging baskets and apparently they are going to recoup in the region of £20,000 for the evening charges?? It is time the Dorking Advertiser ran an freedom of information request on all the waste that goes on in at Mole Valley and find out what the tory councillors have against Dorking??
ReplyDeleteCricketers Chris
Jim,
ReplyDeleteWell, you being at the sharp end of things have probably been thinking about this more than me! You are in a very good position to judge how things are run between the two towns. My casual observations are that Reigate seems the busier of the two but not to the extent that it's over run, it seems to me that it's exactly what Dorking should be - a busy market town that is seen as the natural shopping destination for the outlying villages in a 5 mile or so radius and that Morrisons is the reason for this or at least a large part of the reason for it. Mind you, they do have to suffer Redhill on their doorstep.....
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