One of the priorities for residents in Westborough is still the issue of parking.  The Westborough Parking Group has been meeting for more than a year now to try to identify exactly how big the problem is and what can be done to deal with it. Westborough includes the whole of the Westborough council ward including Park Barn, Westborough and the parts which used to be in Stoughton ward.

At this morning’s meeting we went through a draft Action Plan which will be looked at by the Guildford Borough Council Executive at its meeting in July this year.  The draft includes the problems with parking near Stoughton Recreation Ground when there are football matches and whether there is somewhere else the cars could go; how well the present parking restrictions are enforced; how to identify particularly bad examples of inconsiderate parking and how much the area is used by people who don’t live here as a place to leave their car either for the day or longer term.  The local police team was represented as well as the GBC parking team so they could tell us what they are already doing and listen to the problems residents have reported to councillors.

I have to give credit to the representative of the University of Surrey for turning up regularly, although at times he has been given a rather rough time by other people round the table.  It is a shame that the person from Royal Surrey County Hospital has not been able to come along on a regular basis as it would be really helpful to know how they can contribute to finding a solution.

As well as looking at whether putting more parking spaces in at the university and the hospital, we were talking about creating home zones and 20mph speed limits to discourage people travelling through the area from using residential roads as a shortcut and/or car park.  We also talked about the idea of a Park Barn railway station and whether it would help with cutting down on journeys to and from the university and hospitals as well as local residents wanting to get into Guildford.  There wouldn’t be a car park there so it would not encourage more people to drive into the area.

Surrey County Council is doing a consultation at the moment on a Surrey Rail Strategy and it would be great if as many residents as possible could write into that consultation to let the county know their views.