Welcome to my blog. I am a former local journalist who now works in PR and a Conservative and community activist in Woking and Horsell. This blog will keep updated on local issues as well as my interests and quirky news stories.
On Monday evening, I hosted Horsell Village Horsell Trustees and this clashed with both the Conservative group meeting and the Christmas panel meeting for Horsell of Surrey Police. I did however pop along to the first 25 minutes of the latter before dashing back home for HVH because I think it is important to know what the policing issues are.
The panel consists of PC Josh Parish, our excellent neighbourhood officer, PSCO Kimberley Muir who I don’t know that well but I have seen out patrolling in the village quite a lot and Kate Wilson, Woking Borough Council’s neighbourhood officer. Josh spoke a bit about problems of parking near the C of E school around rush hour and about how he and Kimberley had been moving inconsiderately parking vehicles on – to mixed reaction. Plans are afoot to strengthen this measure.
He also mentioned the anti-burglary operation that Surrey Police has been carrying out, the reason that he knocked on my door a few weeks ago. Questions from the floor were almost exclusively about speeding, whether it be along Chobham Road, Brewery Road or down side streets. It certainly seems to be a problem and on Brewery Road I know of at least one recent incident where damage was caused by an accident.
The Speedwatch programme is an excellent scheme but not to everyone’s taste. I guess it depends on your views on speeding – my view is that communities have to take responsibility and that training them up to issue warnings to speeding drivers is a natural application of this principle. Drivers don’t have the right to speed just because they think that they can handle it – while it is annoying to be picked up for doing just over the speed limit, unfortunately for many dangerous drivers speed is a key identifier.
I would train up for the scheme but cannot see how I would have the time to participate at the moment. We need less speeding in Horsell because of the busy and crammed nature of our village. There are too many people around, a lot of them children, to take risks. Horsell can easily be bypassed for those trying to get elsewhere in a hurry – there is no excuse for them to coming racing through the village.
