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31 Victoria Road
The outside has been painted bright pink and looks awful on this beautiful Victorian facade. Is this allowed, is the building listed ?
F P Turner Jewellers is now Bright Pink !
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Comments
Looking at the two shops together you can get a feel of the ghettoish future.
Are you serious? Maybe go to a getto and then talk. Surbiton is no where near a getto. What a uneducated comment.
Calling my comment 'uneducated' is a bit testy. I was only trying to do a bit of a Brian Sewell.
I think they should paint the whole High St pink (like Clint Eastwood did that town red) starting with the station. Instead of scaring away the baddies like Clint did it will attract a lot more gay people to come and use the shops. They have sooo much more disposable income!
Surbiton is nowhere near being a ghetto, but it is true that the council seem to be trying their best to turn it into one.
I am surprised that there is this much outrage at a hideous shopfront when there is a guy selling mobile phone accessories out of a hole in the wall a little further up the road!
If people spent more of their time and money supporting local business such as the Jewellers etc they wouldn't close down and have to be rented out. As for the comment someone made on another forum about there being too many nail bars in Surbiton the fact that there are over 9 coffee shops ,12 charity shops and little else is it a wonder Surbiton is going down hill. Instead of putting stupid ill informed comments of which most people on here have no idea what goes on in the real world and think that they have a god given right to have Surbiton as they want but don't put their money where their mouths are and spent more time out there they might get their wish. As it stands the shop owners and the Council granted permission for the Salon to go ahead and the paint job isn't hurting anyone. The old Abbey National site and The Duke of York and The Victoria look old tired dark and depressing, The do-gooder's of Surbiton need to realise that a business needs to make money and with high rates and you don't even get your refuse collected is disgraceful so how do they expect shops to stay there.The parking is terrible and the choice of shops terrible that's why Surbiton is the way it is, and as Mr Edward Davey is so busy being Energy Secretary he is not interested in your High Street or you so remember that in the next election. The building is not listed and as a large part of Surbiton is modernised an old shop looks out of place. It also needed a lot of renovation at huge expense and could not continue as it was. If you are all so concerned maybe the owners should have made it a museum and charged you all to look around at the lovely old building seeing as people liked to look at the shop, sadly you cant run a business on nothing but nostalgia and things have changed. For the comment about why the shop closed I hear that many customers are still using the wonderful services of the owners and are very happy with the service they get from them.
Much of this comment is true. However, I suspect it has been posted by F P Turner.
if turners had not tried to fleece customers they wouldn't have needed to shut down
i have been subject to their underestimates on silver items by over 400%
I was so disgusted by their behaviour i told my neighbours,
news of bad service spreads.
You should be careful about making such accusations without any proof.
No the comment was made by me a Surbiton resident who happens to know someone still using the services of the jeweller.my comments are based on my personal opinion of what is happening in Surbiton in general.i don't care if the shop was painted bright green I just feel it's such an unimportant thing when other shop owners in Surbiton suffer with a low footfall and no help from the council.
Surbiton has always had a low footfall. It is to be expected in a small town that:
1. Is located less than a mile away from a major regional shopping centre.
2. Has a reasonable number of wealthy residents, but all of them live there primarily to commute to London 5 days a week.
Surbiton high street looks very different at 2pm on a Tuesday compared to 2pm on a Saturday. Sure, the coffee shops still do a brisk trade from the 'ladies who lunch', but the rest of the people are mainly students or the unemployed like in most commuter towns.
This explains the proliferation of nail bars and betting shops, the new 'Chicken Cottage' and all of the charity shops. These are the ones that are being used 7 days a week.
If the well off commuters want more of the shops that they would like to see in Surbiton, they need to spend more time and money there, not just pop into Waitrose or M&S when they get off the 18.02 from Waterloo!
There is still no excuse for painting the nail bar pink, but I can understand why it is there.
High streets are dead because many folks buy online,the shops that open in Surbiton are therefore those where it is difficult if not impossible to buy online.
I have lived in Surbiton for 42 years and walk there about once a week for lunch but I cannot remember when I last bought any goods.
Surbiton is better for parking than most with 2 hours free at Waitrose,plus the other pay and display so that cannot be the main reason for a low footfall it is just not an attractive location and garish frontages do not help.
'High streets are dead because many folks buy online'
That is definitely a growing factor, but I have certainly not noticed it in neighbouring Kingston where footfall stills seems good and retail occupancy rates high.
Online will increasingly affect all high streets, but ones like Surbiton will suffer most because the offering isn't good enough to attract people in to browse and buy in the first place.
I actually do buy things in Surbiton from time to time and I think some of the shops sell good value 'essentials', but I only go there because I live a 5 minute walk away and I have popped down for lunch/drink/coffee etc. Outside of groceries, I don't think anyone goes to Surbiton to 'go shopping'.
The problem is that Surbiton is stuck with quite a lot of retail space from the days when everyone wanted a separate shop to sell everything. What do we do with it now?
The reason people stopped using the jewellers is because they had a bad reputation as jewellers as mentioned in a previous forum post. There is nothing wrong with keeping Surbiton traditional, how would you like it to look then? Do you own the new nail bar or are you the jeweller? You certainly sound lime you are. Lets keep a bit of history in Surbiton please, it is going downhill fast.
I too read the forums and also know of several people who were very happy with the work done there and a few bad comments do not make it accurate. I never had a bad experience there and think the shop closing was a loss to Surbiton in general not because of its looks but because of the good things that did happen there. I think Surbiton is losing too much retail space to charity shops and coffee shops and that does not help the other shops there.
Money laundering and people trafficking are the usual MO for these nail bars, hence they are cash only.
It also shows the contempt that Kingston council have for Surbiton high street.
Do keep up dear.
If you'd read the petition details, you'd know that there's nothing the council can do about the paint colour.
As no one cared about the shop when it was a jewellers
No one cared because the shop had such a bad reputation, see previous forum posts. That's probably why it closed.
I am not one for complaining but this really does look bad. I have written to Environmental Services at Kingston Council who say that
"Another resident has indeed brought this to our attention. Normally the owners would have every right to repaint whatever colour they wish; however, this is in a conservation area, and I can confirm that it has been passed to our Planning Enforcement Team. It is down to them to decide whether or not to carry out an investigation".
It has to help if more residents write in so stop moaning and get writing
Shocking, but quite in keeping with the generally poor taste of the recent developments in Surbiton.
I think the reason people are against this nail bar, and blaming it on the colour, which I agree is unforgiving, is: the proprietor is Thai or Vietnamese, the staff dont usually speak English, and dont speak to the customer, they wear impersonal masks because of the unmistakeable smell of chemicals in these shops which means you cant breathe when you venture inside, they only take cash as they probably dont want to pay the Taxman, there is always one guy who is in charge, in case you dont have cash I presume, walking around who is utterly miserable and they are too lazy to remove your varnish correctly, absolutely ruining your nail bed. So please Surbitonians, just speak with your feet and dont go there! There are plenty of nail bars that would welcome you with a smile, do the job properly, and take a credit card in payment. And they arent painted pink either.
I cannot believe it, what a blot on the landscape. And the last thing we need is another nail bar where they file your varnish off with a nose trimmer looking object that completely removes the top layer of your nails, making them thin and therefore they will break easily, they are too lazy to use the correct method of removing varnish which is Acetone. My nails were ruined for nine months because of salons like these. But that is beside the point. I contacted Kingston Council aboutnthe colour, they said there was 'nothing they could do, unfortunately'. So I presume the property is not listed. Well I definitely wouldn't go to any of these type of salons run by amateurs .... Oh yes, they will only take cash by the way, says it all really.
The other nail bar in Surbiton removes and does nails how they are meant to be. I've ben going to Emma's Nails for years so hope this new place doesn't take their business away.
Most nail bars including top salons in London (as someone who has to make sure nails are perfect for work I've used several) want you to pay in cash - so says nothing at all really.
I agree it looks awful and what was only one of a handful of shop facades in Surbiton that gave it some atmosphere.
I really cannot comprehend what Kingston Planning are up to.
It seems they are going out of their way to ruin our High Street.
I will definitely be writing to them to complain.
Do me a favour Surbiton is not a nightclub or a festival it is a high street that needs shoppers coming there to buy stuff not admire the scenery,go to a museum for that.......and as for Kingston Council ask them why they don't help people stay open by reducing rates getting rid of some of the charity shops that don't pay business rates and why Mr Pickles allowed an unscrupulous individual to build his plaza almost financially ruining the shops below it and why they allowed the builders to put cement down the drain and didn't compensate any of the shops for loss of trade whilst Surbiton was shut down and why they won't ease parking restrictions or make more parking spaces. Write and complain about that.... oh and lets not forget the farcical building of flats behind turners and the 2 years of grief and misery and property damage that the shops along there had to endure because of the Lib Dems Greed and Kingston Councils greed....
The more complaints the council receive the sooner something has to be done so get emailing now !
There is a petition to get the owner's to change the shop back to black. Sign now at
http://www.kingstonlibdems.org/pinkshop and pass it on to your friends.
All this outrage! Rather than set up online petitions, has anyone actually spoken to the new owners?
Perhaps they're reasonable people that don't need to be coerced? Personally I have nothing against adding a little colour to the street, but I'm guessing the new owners would be open to toning it down if they knew so many people found it offensive.
Yes, the owners have been spoken to, and the Lib dems have also written to the owner, Mr Bui.
http://www.stmarkslibdems.co.uk/
Here's a direct link to the letter: http://stmarksward.mycouncillor.org.uk/letter-to-pink-shop-owner/
In the letter, you can sense that if Mr Bui continues to show the same level of bad taste, he's going to find it difficult to get the signage changed - that bit does need formal approval from the council.
In the meantime, all we can now do is sign the petition at http://goo.gl/4AyI00
And promise not spend a penny in it until it's painted a more acceptable colour.
We have no hope if our elected representatives can not resits writing in the style of an over-excited teenager
"You can therefore imagine our surprise when it was painted bright shocking pink! "
It's been rented.
I can confirm the owners have NOT been written to by anyone. It's rented out so get the facts straight first before you cast your invalid opinion
The signage cannot stay up because fp turners no longer exists as a shop and is closed you idiot.he can't trade under fp turners. Get a life and find something more worthwhile to complain about like the poaching of rhinos
Did they think they were marketing to Chavs ? I get my nails done but would never dream of going into a salon that looks like that.... what were they thinking ?Are they trying to drum up business from pre teenage girls ?
I really wouldn't worry, this business has fail painted all over it before its even opened , it will be gone in 6 months .
Well quite. It would be far better off in a more chavvy High St, one with perhaps a 24 hour McDonalds, a YMCA, KFC, Chicken Cottage, 99p store, and a green bookmakers.
Fair comment, unfortunately.
Surbiton's high street shouldn't be like that given the relative wealth of the people who live here, but it is.
If people aren't going to support the type of shops that they'd like to see, then those shops won't set up in Surbiton.
Whether or not a pink nail bar is actually better than an empty shop is a matter of opinion, but I can't imagine there are too many 'acceptable' shops clamouring to get into Surbiton.
But those who own places in Surbiton, mostly don't live here... They rent to students! Its a student town now, pretty much everything behind the station and up the hill is students.
If another nail bar could survive in Surbiton,fair enough,but why not trade from the elegant shop front with the F P Turner named covered but not destroyed.
The colour should not matter unless they are aiming at a particular clientele like Peppa pig meets TOWIE in which case pink might be appropriate,personally I would have thought a discreet colour would attract a more wealthy Surbiton female of any age.
I think that the wealthy Surbiton females are more likely to go to the 'Beauty Room' on Maple Road, Bentalls in Kingston etc.
This new one and the existing one a few doors down are clearly targetting a different market altogether.
I'm never going back to the beauty room! Awful service!
Surbitons problem is that it is close to Kingston. The only real hope of saving the High Street is to redevelop it (pedestrianise it and update it) and get a load of chain shops in. Like it or not Zizzi and pizza express (with very different buildings) make it look nice.
It'll never happen due to the proximity to Kingston, but "doing a Walton" to an extent would be the only retail based option in my view.
Otherwise you bite the bullet knock most of it down and build flats, and admit that people only want coffee shops and supermarkets in Surbiton, everything else they go to Kingston for.
As much as people bleat on about it, Surbiton isn't a quaint market town. You pay a lot of money to be there cos it's a commuter hub, largely for young couples to get to work easily. The High steet is hugely "chavvy" (as used in an earlier post), the clientele who frequent a lot of the pubs are also the same, which 10 years ago was far from the case. It's gone "downhill" (in that sense) pretty quickly.
The shops opening cater for the current market, which like it or not, isn't the "beautiful independent shops" that a lot of people wish it was.
Commuter towns exist to serve the commuter needs. Head a bit further down to Esher, say, and the High st there is a mix (not perfect of course), but has independent shops of sorts, and a lot of restaurants, but it manages to fill shops with 'reputable' business as it has a community who do genuinely value it as a High Street, rather than just moan about it on internet forums.
I don’t think you can compare Surbiton and Esher too much because the demographic is so different. Esher must be 90% wealthy/very wealthy white middle class people compared to more like 50% in Surbiton. Even then, the level of wealth in Surbiton is more likely to be lower and require both partners to work full time.
The two factors combined leave a totally different type of person in the two areas during the week. Esher is likely to be full of people with a lot of time and money on their hands to support local shops and businesses as much as necessary.
Surbiton meanwhile will be full of the ‘other 50%’ which includes a lot of students, unemployed people, YMCA residents etc. Not exactly the type of people that are going to be buying art, antiques or baby clothes to support Esher-style specialist shops to sell them.
I don’t think that this is necessarily a bad thing. I live in Surbiton for the commute, the river, a few of the pubs and restaurants, not the snob appeal of the town centre even though I do shop there a bit. As a Surbiton resident, I live closer to Kingston town centre than most residents of a lot of towns live to their own town centres. I think I am fairly well covered for shopping!
OK, I agree that the pink nail bar is tasteless and I can’t understand why we need to have a Chicken Cottage right next door to KFC, but if these places weren’t doing business in the area they would not exist in the first place. They might seem out of place when you do the Waitrose run on a Saturday morning, but they are obviously popular enough during the week.
My only complaints would be with the Saucy Kettle pub and the 24 hour McDonalds because it does appear that these two places do bring troublemakers into Surbiton who otherwise would not have come here. Everywhere else is just catering for the ‘other 50%’ of Surbiton residents. Where else would they go otherwise?
I totally agree with some of the points about Surbiton, but not really Walton.
Walton's town centre has always been awful and it still is. Sure the 'Heart' is fine, but it doesn't seem to have had any affect on the rest of the town.
As you say, Esher is much better but is really just a collection of antiques and similar shops breaking up the restaurants and estate agents. It is not a fully functioning town centre, but it doesn't really need to be.
Surbiton is a much more mixed town than somewhere with a very homogenous population like Esher, and it needs to cater for all of those people. For every commuter living in their £1m semi in the river roads there is a benefits claimant living on the Alpha Estate and those two groups have very different wants and needs.
I can't agree about the pubs going downhill either. If you go into the Surbiton Flyer, Vinoteque, Grove Tavern or Antelope you will find much nicer pubs with much better clientele than the sad places that were there 10 years ago. Sure, the Saucy Kettle and Wetherspoons still exist and are as bad as ever, and a lot of the town centre pubs attract a mixed crowd, but Surbiton is a proper working town, not a virtually universally privileged area like Esher.
I have lived in Surbiton for many years, and I think it has actually become more middle class over that time. The housing boom has made it impossible for people to buy the type of house that they would have done in previous generations, so a lot of the people that would have liked to live in Wimbledon or a private road in Esher are now 'stuck' in Surbiton as the next best option.
I personally have would have no objection to a few more chains moving into Surbiton. I don't think anyone really wants to see that happen, but it is certainly better than the alternative which seems to be more charity shops, empty shops and pink nail bars.
As you say, the real answer is admitting that the amount of retail space in Surbiton is at least twice what is now required and start replacing some of it with housing and other infrastructure to support the ballooning population.
I can't see the greedy commercial landlords agreeing to it, though.
"doing a Walton"
The heart has half of the stores closed due to high rent, the high street is just as run down as Surbiton and is full of charity shops!
I wouldn't really want Surbiton to 'do a Walton' anyway. The Heart was built in response to Walton's town centre being ugly and concrete and because of the need to house some of the more mainstream stores that aren't snobbish enough to go into neighbouring Weybridge or Esher.
Surbiton has neither of those problems. If you can look past the hideous shopfronts, Surbiton actually has quite a lot of nice Victorian architecture in the town centre, especially the Electric Parade in Brighton Road. Even some of the modern stuff like the building housing Barclays is ok. There are a lot of mistakes like the Sainsbury's building, M&Co etc, but the Heart will look like that in 20 years and the Victorian stuff won't if well maintained.
The snobbishness of neighbouring towns does not exist either. All of the mainstream brands want to be in Kingston, and Surbiton has plenty enough retail space as it is to accomodate those who do want to come here.
For me, the actions needed are clear:
1. Reduction of commercial rents to levels that would allow different types of retailers to make a reasonable profit given the limited footfall.
2. Conversion of suitable retail space into residential or other use. We are actually still building more retail capacity (e.g. Surbiton Plaza) and that remains unoccupied along with an increasing number of the original units.
3. Stricter rules on what is permitted in a conservation area re. colour schemes, plastic frontages etc. There is no reason not to have a nail bar or fried chicken shop in Surbiton, but they don't have to look so tacky.
By "doing a Walton" there was perhaps not enough detail included. Yes it's still rubbish there, but ultimately they reduced empty, rubbish, ugly retail space into more attractive, pedestrian retail space, with increased accommodation. No, it's not made it perfect, but the area that got worked on is far better than it was before.
The logic still applies, there is too much empty, pointless retail space that'll never get filled. Get rid of it and add some housing, making what retail space is left a lot more useful, attractive and accessible (In basic terms, a lot more people living close by to a newly pedestrianised High Street could do nothing but increase footfall into it).
Accept the new demographic and their needs and cater for it, rather than maintain a hope that this will ever have a flourishing High Street like "the good old days".
I love the comment about snobbery in neighbouring towns, amusing really given the immense snobbery on these boards and in Surbiton in general these days.
I definitely agree that Surbiton should lose perhaps 50% of it’s retail capacity and smarten up what is left, but I don’t think building too much new stuff like the Heart is the way forward. They tried a mini version of that with Surbiton Plaza and that has flopped with the retail space still not rented.
The problem is what to put there instead. Housing would be the obvious choice because, as you say, that would reduce retail space and increase footfall at once, but what about the infrastructure?
Anyone who is buying or renting property in Surbiton at a market rate is only doing so for the quick commute into London. If you don’t need to work, there are other places with a much better price/nice ratio. The problem is that the train service is already massively overcrowded, so adding another 2,000 flats is only going to compound the problem. South West Trains have already said that they cannot increase capacity, and it is likely to be chaos if Crossrail 2 is approved to run on the same lines in the future.
Schools and health services are other problems, but they are ones that you hope would be addressed in any plans to build housing in the first place.
The point about snobbery was just to illustrate the differences between Surbiton and Walton. When the Heart opened, it had a lot of the shops that most Esher-ites would have baulked at having on their high street – HMV, La Senza etc. This is quite a big advantage, because you can bet quite a few people from those towns shopped there even if they wouldn’t admit it. The Heart also created a critical mass quite quickly – a reasonably attractive shopping area with a good range of shops for people from quite a wide area of small Surrey towns that can’t always be bothered to go all the way to Kingston or Guildford but need a bit more than is on offer in Esher or Cobham.
Surbiton is in a completely different position because Kingston is within a mile and has virtually every shop you can think of, right from the high end down to the bottom of the market. If chains like the 99p Store and M&Co are happy to come to Surbiton, then Surbiton-ites have to accept that might be the best they are going to get.
The rent might be cheaper in Surbiton than Kingston, but if Kingston has 10 times the footfall for twice the rent, then most shops are just going to go there unless they really can’t afford it.