Postpone road closure until summer - petition

Nov 30 2009 By Rupert Basham

Councillor for St George's Hill, John Bartlett

MP for Runnymede and Weybridge Philip Hammond has been fighting the closure of Seven Hills Road since it was first made aware to him in October.

A lot of resident's have been angry at Surrey county council's for not letting them know earlier about the possibility of the road closure.

Having kept in constant contact with resident's, prior to the closure being cut to 12 weeks, Mr Hammond referred to Surrey county council's involvement as a 'lamentable failure of process'.

Mr Hammond, is happy now that that SGN have listened to resident's concerns and that more resources have been thrown into the mix.

He said: "They have now convinced me that this essential work does need to be done and it's about providing protection to the gas network. Obviously I'm delighted they have reversed their original view on how much resource they could apply to the job which is more in line with what people think is reasonable. I think we are in a much better place then we were, but we should keep going.

"I'm sure the county council have done what they they've normally done in this position, but I think a big neon flashing light should have gone off when this came through. It should have been handled with the sensitivity of the contentiousness of the issue."

Equally, Roy Taylor county councillor for Walton South and Oatlands (Conservative) believes that Surrey should have acted differently.

Mr Taylor, said: "We haven't done the best job, but let's be fair, things are falling into place. Twelve weeks is very tight but we have applied a lot of political pressure in the last few weeks onto SGN but the closure is still going to be three months of considerable disruption."

Prospective parliamentary candidate for the Conservatives in Esher and Walton, Dominic Raab, said: "The handling has been clumsy, the consultation has come late, but better late than never. At least resident's are getting the assurance that it has been reduced which is the main priority."