Opinion: Festival Success Should Stimulate A Masterplan That Utilises Guildford’s Riches

Published on: 22 Sep, 2019
Updated on: 24 Sep, 2019

By Bill Stokoe

Chair, Guildford Vision Group

A great number of people enjoyed Guildford’s fine heritage sites and attractions during last weekend’s Heritage Festival. Many of us involved consider the huge volume of visitors, many of them residents, made this year’s event one of the most successful.

And there are lessons to be drawn from the Heritage experience. As councillors draw up the terms of reference for the town centre masterplan, called for under the motion passed at the recent council meeting, maybe they should bear this experience in mind.

I was a guide at Abbot’s Hospital and people I spoke to, including residents, were really taken by what Guildford had to offer. In a relatively easy-to-tour space they had the opportunity to explore and experience a wide variety of the great things that form our town’s story. And it is quite a story.

To the Heritage trail one can also add the attractions of our green belt and AONB setting, which themselves have interesting tales to tell, eg the Pilgrims’ Way and life in Saxon times.

Let’s develop this in a comprehensive strategy and plan for the town centre.

Guildford Vision has long called for a town centre masterplan. We continue to do so. We have offered an example, see the GVG website.

The GVG plan has been a rallying point, and something of a polarising influence, particularly for those who don’t like one of its central infrastructure proposals.

The GVG new east-west crossing, now possibly stymied by the Solum development, has been characterised by the less enthusiastic as a viaduct, flyover and four-lane highway, suggesting too much of a car-centric approach.

On the contrary, the design is very much people-centric.

The crossing is the great enabler. It delivers so many benefits to visitors and residents alike. It takes traffic away from the centre and allows the riverside to be opened up. It makes wider pedestrianisation possible, along with joined-up cycleways.

It delivers a better route for people between the High Street, North Street and the railway station, plus a much better transport hub.

To all these benefits can be added access to our heritage and surrounding countryside attractions. So, as the brief for the masterplan consultancy is drawn up, let’s keep heritage, countryside and access to both firmly in mind.

Bill Stokoe

The masterplan should not just be improving access to the retail offering, but should enhance Guildford’s many and varied exciting venues, displaying our town as a much more attraction-rich destination, a better day out, than that offered by neighbouring towns.

Turn the negatives of gap town, river barrier and hilly setting into positives. Promote a day out along the riverside. Celebrate the wider pedestrianisation as improving access to our heritage and not just the retail centres and nightlife, important as they may be.

Guildford railway station should be a modern transport hub, giving immediate and easy access to cycle trails and great countryside walks.

Let’s avoid piecemeal. Let’s get the council planners to design a comprehensive scheme so all this joins up.

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