Leatherhead AHEAD : from the archives: 1983
This stinging editorial comes from the 1983 Surrey Advertiser.
Some things are better now but in other ways have we progressed? Judge for yourself ...

The county council knows best
The Surrey Advertiser, January 7th 1983: leading article

The Battle of Leatherhead was fought out at County Hall, Kingston, on Wednesday. The massed ranks of the establishment, comprising most of the county council and members of the planning and highways committees, decided that they know what the town centre of Leatherhead needs better than the traders who created it.

At a special meeting it was decided that Church Street will remain closed, at least for five years until the M25 is finished. Even the highways committee, which recently had second thoughts, went along with this and without any hint that perhaps its own gyratory system needed another look, as the principal culprit for a situation in which 25 per cent of the town centre shops have been reported closed.

This is a triumph for bureaucracy, for the principle that local authorities must never admit to a mistake. It is also a vindication of the committee system which takes so long to reach its conclusions, but contains the safeguard that no one can be blamed because it was "the committee" which decided.

The disheartened traders of Leatherhead, who are answerable to commercial realities rather than committees, will now have to face problems which they believe a little flexibility could have solved.

However, the die was clearly cast in the presentations made to Wednesday's special meeting. Both the highway and planning departments were at pains to defend their schemes and suggest that there could be any number of other reasons for Leatherhead's shopping decline. They presented alternative ideas for Church Street, and then demolished them.

We still maintain that town planning is intended to benefit people, not to justify the existence of planning departments.

The Leatherhead town centre scheme has certainly benefited people to the extent that it has provided a large new Sainsbury's, with car park attached, and opened up the High Street to pedestrians. There are merits in this, though the balance seems to be heavily weighted in Sainsbury's favour.

On the other hand, the town has lost a number of local traders who say the new road pattern, road closures and shopping centre made their businesses uneconomic. They were wrong to say this. Surrey County Council says so, from its vast background of commercial experience.

Leatherhead's problems, we are sure the county council will agree, derive from the facts that traders do not go around saying what a wonderful town it is and that the press keeps printing criticisms of the county's decisions from those who disagree with them.

There is no pleasing some people. "The town seems designed to keep shoppers out," said one. "I drove round and round and never found the Swan Centre. I ended up with a parking fine of £6." Sheer propaganda of course, but it is embarrassing that the speaker was Mr. Sandy Brigstocke, chairman of the county planning committee.

However, the county planning officer wraps it all up. "There is no need to suppose the fall off in trade to have been caused by the exclusion of traffic ... ". What a pity that three paragraphs later he had to say: "The complexity of present routes undoubtedly detracts from the appeal of the town to car-borne shoppers ..."

So Leatherhead must make the best of a bad job. If the traders have the energy and resources to succeed (in what is undoubtedly, one of the worst economic situations they have ever faced) it will be the county council which says: "There you are, we were right."

If the traders do not make it and leave Sainsbury's in splendid isolation in a derelict town it will not be the county council's fault, but a consequence of world recession.

We hope this ancient town will surmount its difficulties. The probability is that it will, for traders are a determined and resourceful breed. It is upon them that the future of the town depends. What a pity they do not feel they have the support of the county council behind them.

link: Surrey Advertiser