Letter: GBC’s Corporate Strategy – Where Is the Ambition?

Published on: 25 Jul, 2024
Updated on: 26 Jul, 2024

From Brian Creese

former chair of Guildford Labour

I have just had the dubious pleasure of reading Guildford Borough Council’s Corporate Strategy for 2024-34. To say I am underwhelmed is understating it.

The strategy is 32 pages of vacuous good intentions backed up with almost no detail on how those aims are to be achieved. Any critical reading would suggest that none of these good intentions is ever likely to be achieved.

For example, the first “priority” is to be a more sustainable borough. The aims are all laudable – becoming carbon neutral council by 2030, cleaner air, better resilience to climate change, improved biodiversity, ensuring new communities are delivered sustainably.

All good things, but how is GBC going to do this? Let’s look at cleaner air as an example. This will be achieved by continuing the Air Quality Management areas and introducing new ones as necessary, looking to increase council use of electric vehicles (EVs) and supporting Active Travel schemes.

Given that areas of Guildford adjacent to the A3, most notably Park Barn, have some of the worst quality air in Surrey, what sort of impact would we expect from these measures, given that there are no targets, no specific measures, no ambition and no expectation of success?

But where is the ambition? On page 4 we learn that there is a life expectancy gap of eight years between the most and least advantaged areas of Guildford, a shocking admission. Yet the section that looks at health and wellbeing doesn’t reference this, and makes no attempt to redress this dreadful imbalance.

Instead we have the vague aspiration that everyone in Guildford has an opportunity to thrive which will be achieved by “align[ing] our leisure offer…. With partners to offer rehabilitation, health and weight management classes” There are other actions but they are similarly unspecific.

We have just had a general election where the British people called for change and we have a new government filled with energy and ambition to achieve that change. In Guildford we have an unambitious Liberal Democrat council with no vision, no ambition and no idea how it is going to achieve its vague vision for the future.

This is not a strategy and barely a vision but an admission that this council has no idea how to progress the town and the surrounding area. What a wasted opportunity.

Responses to Letter: GBC’s Corporate Strategy – Where Is the Ambition?

David Roberts Reply

July 26, 2024 at 6:53 pm

The Strategy mentions “nature” twice in passing, the “countryside” once and the “green belt” not at all. This alone is enough to demonstrate GBC’s warped priorities.
Ben Paton Reply

July 27, 2024 at 10:06 am

Mr Creese asks: “All good things, but how is GBC going to do this?”

Well? What is the Labour Party’s solution?

To date its primary contribution was to back the “ambition” of Cllrs Mansbridge and Juneja to build three “new towns” on green field, green belt sites, one of which is completely car dependent.

The current Labour Government “solution” is growth. Listen to Radio 4 and catch a snippet of an interview with the new Chancellor and you wonder if Liz Truss has been reincarnated.