by Paul Scully | Jun 13, 2015 | News, News |
Home Group, the owners of Victoria House recently held a public consultation event for local residents to share their new proposals. For those who couldn’t make either drop-in session I have some photos of the exhibits to give people an idea of what they are planning.
The design splits the bulk into two buildings which allows sunlight into the back windows of the flats on the Church Hill Road side. The height gradually steps up to a maximum ten-storeys.
Speaking to residents, they seem to have three main areas of concern; the height, parking and the colour of the bricks used. Whether people like the height will be somewhat subjective. Some people will look at the family houses to the north and south and want this design to be closer to that skyline, others will not mind the bold design and prefer the fact that more homes will be available.
Victoria House is well served by buses, but a considerable distance from a railway station so is not necessarily as appealing as other developments for young commuters. Parking therefore, is going to need careful consideration. The brickwork was chosen to strike a balance between the colour of the buildings on each corner and a light colour that will weather well.
Home Group have promised to consider all feedback before finalising their design and presenting it to the council for planning. Please do let me know what you think. We all want this development to go ahead as soon as possible but it needs to be the right design for decades to come.
by Ranulph Murray | May 6, 2015 | News, News |
St Helier is the number one local issue raised on the doorstep by local residents. I’m pleased that Jeremy Hunt, Secretary of State for Health has issued the following statement. If elected, I want to ensure that the hospital remains safe but go further. The Hospital Trust needs breathing space to get its finances in order and to rebuild the morale of staff that must be at the end of their tether with the use of the hospital as a political football.
Dear Resident,
St Helier Hospital is Safe
You may have received correspondence from the Liberal Democrats making alarming claims about the future of St Helier Hospital. As a Surrey resident and MP, I know full well how important our local NHS services are. I therefore wanted to reiterate personally that any suggestion St Helier Hospital is set to close is completely unfounded.
In fact the Trust recently announced plans for a major investment in the services at the St Helier site over the next five years. Epsom and St Helier University Hospitals NHS Trust has set out a programme to invest significantly in modernising its estates, improving its facilities and updating IT systems and equipment.
These plans have been completed and were considered by the Trust Board at its meeting on 27th March. The 2015-20 strategy makes clear that both Epsom and St Helier Hospitals will continue to provide consultant-led, 24/7 A&E, maternity and in-patient paediatric services. In addition, St Helier will provide specialist and emergency care, such as acute surgery, for the sickest patients. This means there will be significant investment in the hospital site over the next five years.
A future Conservative government will ensure these improvements are delivered so that local people can continue to enjoy an improvement in services. While Labour and the Lib Dems seeks to scaremonger and irresponsibly ‘weaponise’ the NHS for votes, we are offering a positive, secure future for our health service. Over the last 5 years we have increased the NHS budget by over £7 billion in real terms, funding 9,500 extra doctors and 7,000 extra nurses. We have also guaranteed to fund the additional £8 billion that the NHS says it needs over the next 5 years so that you and your family will get the care you need.
Yours faithfully,
Jeremy Hunt
Secretary of State for Health
by Paul Scully | Mar 26, 2015 | News, News |
I wrote a few weeks ago about the absolute necessity to protect healthcare services at St Helier. Before the latest real threat to services at St Helier hospital, our local MPs have shown Ed Miliband how to weaponise the NHS by scaring residents into thinking their hospital was under perpetual notice of closure over the last two decades. The net result of this was to move most services away from Sutton Hospital to St Helier. The Sutton Hospital plot will soon be empty. I have also written before about the problems of building a school on the site.
Sutton Council, despite massive public opposition, gave planning permission for a Medical Centre and houses to be built on the old Henderson Hospital site in Belmont. To date, NHS England has not approved the business plan and our Lib Dem MP told the Belmont and South Cheam Residents Association Meeting, on 3rd February, that the project would not go ahead because it wasn’t viable without a commercial pharmacy.
Ever since the development was first proposed, residents have highlighted the shortcomings of the original plans, particularly the distance from public transport. That will particularly affect patients at the Grove Road Practice which will be relocated 1.7 miles away from its present location. The council were urged to reject the application and to work towards getting the Medical Centre on to the Sutton Hospital site. Unfortunately they took no notice.
Sutton Council seems to be prepared to spend millions of pounds on a sizeable plot of land on the Sutton Hospital site for a school and with no intention of using any part of it to build a Medical Centre. Despite this purchase there is still more redundant land on the Sutton Hospital site. The Council says it is working to provide a proper infrastructure for the residents of the Borough. Now it is time for it to respond to the wishes of local people and accomplish something positive for Belmont and South Sutton, as well as catering for the needs of patients around Grove Road.
Will it ever happen? Only if local politicians feel the weight of public opinion. That’s why I’m asking local residents to join me, local councillors and many other Belmont residents in supporting my campaign to see a new medical centre on the Sutton Hospital site akin to the Jubilee Centre in Wallington where people can go for blood tests and minor procedures, thus taking some pressure of St Helier. In doing this, the Royal Marsden and the Institute of Cancer Research will still have enough space to expand according to their current plans. We’re lucky to have two world class cancer centres on our doorstep and we should support them whenever possible. I hope that you will sign my petition here and if elected, I will continue to push for a medical campus on this site.
by Jeremy Crampin | Mar 25, 2015 | News, News |
The Nightingale has stormed to victory to win my Pub of the Year competition for a second consecutive year. Situated on the corner of Lind Road and Carshalton Road, the pub received over 450 votes from loyal customers both via my Sutton Local website and paper entries on the bar.
Congratulations to The Railway in Cheam Village and The Robin Hood in West Sutton, coming second and third respectively. One loyal Nightingale punter will also be randomly selected to receive a £100 bar tab to spend in the winning pub.
I really enjoy organising this local annual contest as well as my Independent Shop of the Year competition. Local businesses are the lifeblood of our communities, and for our high streets to thrive and create jobs, whilst maintaining their character, local people have to come out and support them. In this competition that is exactly what has happened, so it is wonderful to see.
I am committed to continuing these fun competitions as a way to reward the hard work of local business owners and to put the spotlight on issues acting as barriers to a healthy local economy. Some people have suggested organising one for charities or restaurants, which I will certainly look into.
by Paul Scully | Mar 23, 2015 | News, News |
I have been in contact with the owners of Victoria House in North Cheam asking them for details of their plans for the eyesore building. They have sent me a copy of the presentation that some residents saw at the council’s recent Local Committee. The building is a very different design from the one that received planning permission a while back. Split into two, the new proposed building is designed to allow sunlight to enter the rear windows of the homes that face Church Hill Road. The intention is to allow the buildings to step up to a peak rather than one monolithic block sitting between lower buildings.
A public consultation will be held in May where residents will be invited to make comments before a planning application is submitted shortly afterwards. It is difficult to make a decision on the aesthetics of the building from these drawings. However it would seem that we are not going to get the landmark building that befits this important site. We all want Victoria House sorted as soon as possible, but not at any cost. Have a look and do let me know what you think.
by Paul Scully | Mar 16, 2015 | News, News |
Residents in Gander Green Lane have complained for years about HGVs on their residential road, shaking the foundations of their house at all hours. When the Kimpton Road Industrial Estate was built, plans for a link road were mooted but quickly shelved. That left HGVs looking at small, inappropriate roads to travel between the A217 and the A24. If the road had been put in at the time, traffic in the surrounding areas would run much smoother. Unfortunately subsequent development has meant that getting a link road will be incredibly difficult even if the money was there. That doesn’t mean we should not stop looking for a solution to this long-running issue.
I’ve been running a petition alongside the residents in Gander Green Lane to demonstrate support for action. In doing so, I aim to get Transport for London and the London Boroughs of Sutton and Merton to put it back on their agenda. The first thing to do is the simple quick-hits: making sure the weight restriction signs are absolutely clear at both ends of Gander Green Lane and Hamilton Avenue and get the satnav companies to redesign their routing software to avoid these roads.
As annoying as this is for residents, it affects a small proportion of constituents, but is but one example of a problem that seems intractable and so gets ignored by local decision makers. Central Road in Worcester Park is another place on which politicians seem to have given up. The perpetual traffic jams which affect Lynwood Road, Hampton Road, Green Lane, Browning Avenue among many more are caused primarily by the fact that there is only one road going under the railway line for about half mile in either direction. If there is a problem on the A3, the traffic will quickly back-up. I’m told that the traffic lights at South Lane/Malden Road junction cause tailbacks and are worth reviewing. I’ll investigate this further and see if this bears fruit.
For those travelling to Carshalton or Croydon from Sutton by road, the A232 has got considerably worse over the last few years and the council have missed a couple of chances to ease congestion here. The B&Q and BP garage on Carshalton Road were both given planning permission without thought to remodelling the junctions that they sit on. Both junctions are the cause of frustration to motorists travelling along that road.
We really need to push to ensure that planners take in a long term view of the area and likely increases in traffic if we’re going to keep Sutton moving. So many quality of life issues are determined locally rather than in Westminster. Therefore if elected, I won’t just go out and camp in the House of Commons, caught in the trappings of office. Sutton is my home too and I want it to be the best place possible in which to live and work.
