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Ewell Road
Council refuses to deny Surbiton library sell-off
Kingston Council has refused to deny the plan.
Kingston Council has been accused of “selling off the family silver” after it refused to confirm whether it planned to flog Surbiton library.
Deputy leader Liz Green, who spoke in favour of the move at a Kingston Council assets strategy meeting last week, played down the rumours, saying there were “no immediate plans” to sell the Ewell Road site.
She did, however, fail to rule out the move, admitting the site, along with others in the borough, was “under review” and that there was a “possibility” it would be sold.
Councillor Green said she would personally be in favour of moving the library to a more central location, possibly Victoria Road, though was keen to stress that it was not the opinion of the council.
She said the current library in Surbiton was not “fit for purpose”, that the 1930s building was very expensive to maintain and that it should be in a more central location.
However, she was keen to assure residents that there would always be a library in Surbiton.
A building that is home to adults with learning difficulties and a memorial commemorating victims of World War II form part of the land that could be sold off with Surbiton library.
At Sessions House, next to Surbiton library on Ewell Road, service users can talk to nurses and access services such as speech and language therapy.
It is run by social enterprise Your Health Care, which runs some health care services for NHS Kingston, who run a number of programmes, including physiotherapy, nursing and dietetics.
The war memorial, situated in the gardens of Sessions Houses, plays a pivotal role in Surbiton’s Remembrance Day service.
The grade two listed building, built in 1896, has had many uses throughout its 100-year plus history, including being the headquarters for Surbiton district council.
Berrylands Councillor Karen George, who was also present at the meeting, believes selling off the library has been in the pipeline for a long time.
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Comments
For now whether Surbiton library will close or be moved elsewhere is for future debate. Still Deputy Leader of Kingston Council Liz Green is quoted as saying the library isn't "fit for purpose" and that the 1930's building was very expensive to maintain and that in her opinion the library would be better located in Victoria Road. Councillor Karen George believes there is an intent to sell off the library and said Cllr Liz Green is in favour of the move and that she "wields a lot of power."
Surbiton library has many services ranging from books, computer games, language courses, children's groups, adult reading classes, internet access, computer software for disabled persons, and of course a hall for hire which can be used for talks, films, clubs and fitness classes. The library is accessible for the disabled by ramp, with wheelchair friendly computer desks and disabled toilets. Seem very "fit for purpose" in my opinion. As for very expensive to maintain. If true that must apply to all that group of buildings, from the Session House to the Fire Station. What a prize location for a property developer they would be. Selling off the "family silver" indeed!
So what of a possible Victoria Road location? Where would any library be located along that road? Maybe Cllr Green could enlighten us with a location. After all she does "wield a lot of power" in the opinion of another councillor. Might be the time to remind all elected officials that their "power" is given by the people. As such the people will hold you to account. We shall be watching this Library story closely.
You're right - any replacement facility must
1. equal or better the current facilities we've got.
2. make sense financially.
In general, it's a good idea to locate the library in the town centre. Increased footfall would benefit both the library and local businesses. The new polyclinic should have been located in the town centre for the same reason (which would also have freed the whole site to for the larger 3 form school that was really required ). The only negative is that any new facility would be further from the further parts of Berrylands. It's a fair old trek from Grand Avenue to Surbiton town centre.
The *big* problem however is that I can't see any developer offering sufficent money for a Ewell Road site that would cover the cost of alternative facilities in Surbiton town centre. Especially the heavily used library hall. Any developer would almsot certainly want to flatten the existing building, and possibly the council owned Session House (ex-immigration appeals building next door). Both buildings are very attractive, and their demolition would be heavily resisted.
The only possible route that could deliver something along the lines of what's being suggested is for a future developer of the Surbiton station carpark site to develop significant community facilities as part of a mooted 200+ apartment development.
In principle, I'd prefer any section 106 planning gains from a large development to be used to give Surbitonians something new, rather than replace what's there already. A new long term fund to build a footbridge to Home Park would fit the bill.
I agree about the town centre location, but I think a lot of people over-estimate how far the library and polyclinic are away.
If you walk through the back of the station, you can be there in 5 minutes which is probably not much further than walking from the station to the dar end of Victoria Road. It feels a long way away because of how long it takes to get there by car.
Yes, the polyclinic and new school site is closer to the town centre than many people think.
The only drawback is that there isn't an accessible footbridge over the railway line.
Mums with pushchairs and the elderly (both heavy users of the future polyclinic) will struggle over the current station footbridge. A new fully accessible footbridge, possibly from the side of The Duke of York to the station carpark would be a great idea. It would also increase accessibility to Surbiton town centre to residents from east of the railway line (Oakhill / Browns Road / Alpha Estate area).
When I first heard mention of a possible Victoria Road (or nearby) site for a new library I could only think of one place and that appears to have it's own plans in place. The station carpark theory is interesting and one to watch so to speak.
I'd love to see the station car park converted into something useful. It is wasted space in a busy town centre location.
I know that there are people that won't agree with this, but I think the lack of a station car park would actually allow more 'correct' use of Surbiton station. With a few exceptions, people who don't live within genuine walking distance of Surbiton station would probably be quicker commuting from somewhere else.
A few years ago, before they put parking restrictions on Claremont Road, quite a lot of Esher and Thames Ditton commuters would drive up and park at Surbiton just to save a few pounds even though it probably added quite a lot of time to their daily commute.
At least they had a reason for doing it, but now, apart from disabled people and the few who don't live near to any station, there is no reason to drive there at all.
I totally agree. Getting rid of the station car park would remove a thousand car journeys a day from Surbiton.
Not only is this good for congestion and air pollution, it could help Surbiton's own commuters.
Over the next 10 years or so, it is forecast that the South West mainline will hit a capacity crunch, as the numbers of users has been increasing significantly year on year. It is probable, even if all trains were formed with 12 carriages, that trains will be full before they come into Surbiton station. Surbiton commuters will end up like those in Earlsfield, having to wait for several trains to arrive before they can actually board at rush hour.
Transport for London (run by Mayor Johnson) haven't had their eye on this forthcoming capacity crunch, and have only belatedly begun to realise its significance to South West London, where there are no alternatives to using the mainline to reach central London. They are very much playing catch up in trying to solve the problem. As usual, their focus is in central London, not out here in the burbs, especially south of the river. There is talk of creating a new Crossrail 2, but it will be many many years before that's built, and mightn't be a great solution to the SW mainline capacity crunch as it's trying to solve too many problems at once.
The Govt's approach to the forthcoming problem is to try and price commuters off rush hour trains. There is absolutely no proof that this will have any effect. London Travel Watch have already rebuked the strategy, saying it will make no difference to Londoner's commuting habits, as
1. peak pricing already exists in the rest of London's transport network, and hasn't succeeded in reducing demand for onward jouneys
2. people who travel at peak do so because either their job dictates that they must, or they have childcare restrictions, eg leaving kids off at school.
So, in short, the fewer people that try to use the staion in future, the better. Surbitonians would be better off getting rid of the car park.
Rather than developing it as flats, however, I still think that it should be ringfenced as a strategic site for the development of further transport links. See this for example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_London_Orbital.
As London's population grows, there will be a massive increase in public transport capacity, and there's no reason not to plan ahead. I'd like to think our London Assembly member was fighting hard for our interests, but I have my doubts about his commitment to public transport in general. See this for example http://www.adambienkov.com/2012/02/tory-am-most-londoners-dont-use-publi...
A number of good points there.
The problems for the Surbiton train service have been building up for years. The number of services have been cut back massively from 25 peak trains an hour in the 1970s to about 12 today. During that time, the population of Surbiton has ballooned due to a massive number of new build flats and an even greater number of conversions of houses into flats.
I dread to think how much the population of Surbiton has actually grown in the past 30 years, and most of the people moving here are doing so to use the fast service into London.
I guess SWT and the other train operaters were hoping that the rise of remote working would offset the increasing demand for their peak services, but that just has not happened.
It is disgraceful that SWT now have posters up using a traffic light system to recommend which train to get on. Green for ok, amber for standing room only and red for limited standing room. Currently, there are no green peak time trains and an increasing number are red!
In the short term, a simple two point plan will improve things significantly:
1. All trains must be 12 coaches
2. 3-4 extra trains an hour to stop at Surbiton at peak time (there are plenty of the white long distance trains that flash past Surbiton half empty every morning so this should not be difficult)
In the medium term, the re-opening of the Eurostar platforms to SWT services should add a bit more capacity as it removes the bottleneck at Waterloo.
In the long term, I have no idea what is going to create enough capacity!
One of the problems is SWT has got too greedy. There should never be short formation trains running out of Surbiton. Several peak hour trains are 8 carriages and there is one just after 9am that is 4 carriages! All of these should be 12 carriages without question.
I don’t think that anyone particularly minds standing on a 15 minute train journey, but SWT’s short trains often make it difficult to get any reasonable standing room. This is what people object to.
The situation is as bad on the weekends, when 4 carriage trains every 15 minutes are quite usual. This means that they are rush-hour packed and SWT contrive to make the journey last as long as 34 minutes which is quite a long time to remain in such cramped conditions.
It appears that SWT’s model is to calculate the minimum reasonable provision and halve it.
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