Category Archives: Leisure

Water safety in Elmbridge

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Elmbridge Borough Council agrees £30k of additional water safety measures

Being situated within close proximity to rivers and open water has many advantages for Elmbridge but of course it brings responsibilities and consequences. While many of our residents and visitors safely enjoy the river both in terms of hospitality and water activities, the dangers of open water should never be underestimated; cold water shock, currents, and the risk of being caught in submerged debris is ever present.

In the absence of a single body responsible for water safety in Elmbridge, and in recognition for the important role that the rivers and other water courses have in the borough, Elmbridge Borough Council is leading the way in Surrey with a ‘Respect the Water: Drowning Prevention Plan’, which was agreed by Elmbridge Cabinet on 11 January.

The plan sets out to reduce the number of water incidents in the borough through training and improved awareness and commits £30k for 2023-2024 to deliver additional drowning prevention projects including:

  1. Free swimming lessons for 12- 18-year-old non swimmers during the summer delivered by Places Leisure at the Xcel Leisure Centre.
  2. Subsidising lifeguard courses run by the internationally recognised Royal Life Saving Society.
  3. Additional throw line boards: Six throw line boards have already been installed at Hurst Park Open Space, Thamesmead Recreation Ground, Waterside Drive, Albany Reach x 2 and Cowey Sale. Additional throw lines will be installed at other high-risk areas, including Desborough Island.

Leading community safety

The Elmbridge Community Safety Partnership has been leading the way in Surrey for a number of years with its multi-agency Drowning Prevention Strategy. Working with our partners at Surrey Fire and Rescue, Surrey Police, the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents (ROSPA), the Royal Life Saving Society (RLSS) and the Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI), the partnership educates and informs about the dangers of open water and acts to keep the open water safe in the borough.

The Partnership also consults with ROSPA about safety equipment such as throw lines.

Educating and informing

This education takes the shape of regular sites visits to our more popular river locations, schools’ promotion, the annual Junior Citizen programme, where in 2022 over 1,550 year 6s from around Elmbridge participated in an interactive session on water safety run by RNLI.

Surrey Fire and Rescue Service, working with Elmbridge and other partners, have also held a number of water safety events in recent months, demonstrating throw line use and highlighting the dangers open water.

Sustainable Elmbridge – our green ambitions

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A sustainable Elmbridge is at the very heart of our decision-making

Climate change impacts us all. Whether that is a heat wave in August forcing us indoors and causing drought warnings or more wet and stormy winters leading to floods and energy blackouts. Our borough is not immune from climate change, which is why in 2019 we declared a climate emergency and pledged to become a carbon neutral council by 2030. Since then, we have been actively working to reduce our own carbon emissions and to encourage our community to do so too.

As the Cabinet member for the Environment, I was pleased that we were able to put sustainability at the heart of the Council’s decision-making. We set out a ten-year action plan to reduce carbon emissions and plan how we will become carbon neutral by 2030 and in last year’s capital spending plan the Cabinet agreed to spend close to £1 million on some key projects. These included solar panel installations and a shift to a fully electric council fleet of vehicles. Projects already completed are:

  • Installing electric vehicle (EV) charging points in our main town centre car parks. Cobham, Esher and recently Churchfields in Weybridge all now have EV chargers and Walton is shortly to follow this year.
  • The solar panel installation on the roof of the Xcel Leisure Complex in Walton-on-Thames was made operational in December 2022; these 973 panels are projected to reduce electrical consumption by 40% and will lead to an estimated CO2 saving of over 75 tonnes per year, based on an estimated annual generation of 304 MWh.
  • Solar panels have been installed at our Centres for the Community in Walton, Cobham, Claygate, Hersham and Molesey, as well as at the Village Hall in Hersham.

Our recent car park survey highlighted that 27% of respondents either owned or planned to buy a ‘plug-in’ electric vehicle in the next year, with 24% expressing that they would use EV charge points in car parks.

A sustainable Elmbridge is fundamental to our draft Local Plan which sets out how we can connect communities through active travel methods such as walking and cycling, as well as how we can build more energy efficient homes in Elmbridge. Energy efficient home design is an active element in the creation of the Elmbridge Design Code which is currently underway in conjunction with our residents.

Cllr Ashley Tilling

Great news about Weybridge Hall

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At last Wednesday’s Elmbridge Cabinet meeting, approval was given to selling Weybridge Hall to Swift Entertainment for its use as a Theatre and Arts Centre. Your ward councillors are really pleased that their continual pressing for the Hall to continue as an entertainment venue, either as a cinema or theatre, is set to come to fruition and will give a boost to the night-time economy of Weybridge. This landmark building at the centre of the town will now be reopened as a venue for the community run by a proven operator – Swift recently refurbished and now successfully run Esher Theatre.

Swift will invest £1.5 million on refurbishments and installations to make it a state-of-the-art facility: a theatre on the ground floor with recording, dance and art studios on the upper floors.Architects drawing of the proposed Floor Plan

Outdoor play

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The RA/LibDem administration want to ensure a sustainable and thriving Elmbridge will always provide opportunities for outdoor play in our hundreds of parks, recreation grounds and open spaces we provide and maintain across the borough.

Among the sandpits, natural play equipment, the swings, slides, zip wires and skateparks we have two paddling pools, both in Weybridge and built in the 1950s, one in Churchfields park and one in Oatlands park. However, they are costly both financially and environmentally: they need filling with fresh water and emptying every day which requires someone on site for up to eleven hours. The third wet-play facility in the Borough is the Hersham splash-pad which was converted from a similar paddling pool; it reduces the need for lengthy filling and emptying and is therefore opened for a much longer period over the summer than the paddling pools.

The first step to reviewing how the pools fit into Elmbridge’s sustainable future will be a public consultation over the next few weeks to understand what residents feel is their preferred way forward for play provision across the Borough.

River Thames Scheme edging closer

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The scheme to build a second flood-relief channel to help prevent the flooding of residential areas, called the River Thames Scheme, has been a long time coming. Plans were first presented to the public by the Environment Agency over ten years ago but were then put on hold by the government due to cost. The floods in 2014 provided impetus to revive the idea of a Thames supplementary channel from Staines to Shepperton as well as work on the downstream weirs at Sunbury and Molesey to allow for the additional flow.

This large scheme is treated as a Nationally Significant Infrastructure Project (NSIP) which requires a Development Consent Order (DCO). This removes the need for separate planning permissions in each local authority and is a quicker process. The application for the DCO is now (September) being presented to the government’s Planning Inspectorate after which parties with an interest in the scheme will be able to comment.

More information is at: www.riverthamesscheme.org.uk

 

Council grants awarded to local organisations

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Your local councillors participated in one of the more pleasurable parts of the job in June and July, that of deciding how to allocate money to organisations that had applied for ‘CIL’ money. Every new development is liable to pay a small proportion of the costs as a Community Infrastructure Levy (CIL) to the council to mitigate the effects of the development on local infrastructure. The sums totalled over a year are allocated only to the local area, in our case Weybridge Riverside, St George’s Hill and Oatlands and Burwood Park wards via the Local Spending Board made up of all the ward councillors.

Councillors were pleased to be able to support the following projects in Weybridge:

  1. St James’ Church ‘Access to All’ to finish installing a ramp, an automated new ramp and kitchenette;
  2. Elmbridge Canoe Club for a balcony extension to provide an outdoor land-based training space;
  3. Manby Lodge to refurbish and extend a garage on site to provide an additional activity space;
  4. St James’ School to improve an under-used outdoor space as the first phase of a mindfulness garden;
  5. Weybridge Town Business Group for installing three totems in key spots along the High Street;
  6. Weybridge Vandals rugby, cricket and netball club to provide two female changing facilities.

The EBC Environment portfolio

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Elmbridge is to slash the carbon footprint of big CO2 emitter Xcel Leisure Centre as part of its commitment to fight climate change. 

In July 2019 the Lib Dems on Elmbridge Borough Council initiated a local focus on the Climate emergency which was approved by full council and, following an audit, the council adopted its first Carbon Management and Reduction Plan in 2020.

In May last year I had the privilege of taking on responsibility for the Environment Portfolio and was keen to make speedier progress on implementing proposals in this plan. Working closely with officers and with the cross-party Climate Change Panel, we have secured sufficient money within the council budget to take forward a number of exciting carbon reduction measures. With nearly a million pounds allocated in the February budget, we are now in a position to move forward with projects including: installing solar panels on the Civic Centre and Community Centres; additional insulation at Community Centres and installing electric vehicle charging points at these locations. EV charging points will also be installed at Churchfields car park, Weybridge, over the next few weeks and later this year at Drewitts Court, Walton.

Significantly, we will be installing solar panels on the roof of the Xcel Leisure Centre – the Council’s biggest carbon emitter. We expect this will give an annual saving of around £50,000 and 77 tonnes of CO2 and expect to recoup the cost of the installation within six years. I have also been promoting the installation of a trial solar carport at the Civic Centre car park which will be a solar PV canopy over ten parking spaces and generate 26,000 kWh/yr to offset the building’s electricity consumption and save some £4,000 and 7 tonnes of CO2 per year.

With fuel prices going up, I am reassured that the Council has made sound decisions for both climate reduction and future cost savings.

Cllr Ashley Tilling

Applications for Local Infrastructure Funding

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Elmbridge Borough Council will soon be accepting applications for the annual local Community Infrastructure Levy (CIL) funding. The application period is Monday 21 February to Sunday 3 April 2022 at midnight,with the applications being reviewed in June and early July.

CIL allows Elmbridge Borough Council to raise funds from developments in the borough to help pay for the physical infrastructure needed to mitigate the impacts of new development.  As part of the process, EBC annually allocates a portion of CIL funds to be spent locally on smaller infrastructure schemes that are required in the communities where development took place.

Seven settlement area committees, known as ‘Local Spending Boards’, have been formed  to cover the whole of Elmbridge; these consist of Ward Councillors serving in each of the areas who meet to decide how their local CIL funds will be allocated. Successful local CIL applications have included projects such as improvements to state schools to better enable them to meet the needs of an increasing school population, improvements to community facilities, footpath works and countryside access improvements.

It is anticipated that by the time the bids come before our Local Spending Board (Oatlands & Burwood Park, Weybridge Riverside & Weybridge St George’s Hill) in June there will be around £250,000 of CIL money to be allocated.

Find out more on the Council’s Community Infrastructure Levy webpages.

Churchfields Town Paths

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At last there has been a positive decision from the Local Inquiry that was held on the 7th September last year. The Inquiry was ordered by the Secretary of State and it has determined that the town paths running through the heart of Weybridge, which were upgraded last year as part of the new link between the town centre and Brooklands Business Park, could be shared by cyclists and pedestrians.

The paths have been used by recreational, slow-moving cyclists and by school children attending Heathside School for many years as a convenient and safe way of travelling around the town. We realise that some people feel vulnerable on the paths and your councillors have worked with the Weybridge Society to promote a Share with Care campaign; signs that have been specially designed will now be placed along the paths with the aim of supporting the campaign to encourage all users to be considerate, careful and safe.  

River Safety

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The British winter doesn’t stop rowers and kayakers on our stretch of the Thames from venturing out when the temperature drops!

In the last few months, your local Councillors have worked with the Environment Agency (EA), other water-sport clubs and the River Users Group to try to make our stretch of the Thames a safer place for the enjoyment of river activities. Fallen trees, many partially submerged along the bank, have been a constant reminder of the ruthless chainsaw felling earlier in the year and the aftermath of some powerful storms. The obstructions they cause can easily cause a capsize of an unwary visitor in any small boat which, in freezing temperatures, can be dangerous.

Cllr Ashley Tilling & Eva Ferlez winning their event at Walton SBH

We are pleased to report that many of the broken trees and overhanging branches were cut back and removed just in time for the Walton Small Boats Head race on the 11th December.

We continue to try to identify places where we could plant new trees to help to combat climate change and to make our green spaces more attractive (see article here). We will also keep working with EBC to persuade the EA to take their responsibilities seriously and remove the unsightly and polluting illegally moored boats that continue to proliferate on our Elmbridge stretches of the Thames.