Thank you to everyone who made it to the public meeting I organised in Godstone last night for residents to ask questions of Surrey County Council, SES Water, Tandridge District Council and utilities on the sinkhole.
It is clear the meeting was needed considering how many people came and I'm glad we were able to set up an overflow room so that no one missed out.
The overwhelming feeling expressed by residents was their frustration with disjointed communication, so I will be starting a mailing list to collate monthly updates from SES Water and Surrey County Council in one place. I'm looking into the best way to set this up so I will share an update here next week.
Disappointingly, we still didn’t mange to get commitment to a completion date, but the stabilisation works are in three tranches and once the third is completed and tested, they can move on to the water pipes. The wet weather recently has made this more difficult.
SES Water expects their works to take around six weeks to complete once they start, but this doesn’t include time to complete all the cross connections.
We are still waiting for a timeline of Surrey County Council’s investigation into who is liable for the collapse. This is of enormous concern to businesses and households and I will continue to press SCC on this point.
Residents expressed significant interest in traffic calming measures in and around the village once the works are finally completed, so I will arrange a further meeting on traffic if there is appetite for this once the work is complete.
This has been dragging on for almost a year now and while it is a very complex repair job, I do share the frustration of villagers with the slow progress and confusing communication. As always, I am here to help anyone who would like to ask a specific question of SCC or SES Water, so please do email me on [email protected] and I will do my best to help.
A huge thank you to Diane Grose, the White Hart Barn and the St Nicholas Youth Centre for allowing us to use their space, and to Daniel Lay Event Services for setting up the video link for the overflow room.
