Letter: I Am Delighted that a Start Has Been Made on North Street

Published on: 15 May, 2025
Updated on: 15 May, 2025

A CGI of how North Street Square area will look when completed.

From John Rigg

Former lead councillor for regeneration at GBC

In response to: North Street Regeneration Moves One Step Closer

I am delighted that a start has been made on delivering homes and a new neighbourhood in the town centre. North Street has been a derelict site for decades. This major investment will help Guildford meet its statutory housing obligation and help sustain town centre life, especially retailing.

We are particularly fortunate that the developer, Berkeley Homes, is known for outstanding, high-quality schemes.

We will only be able to judge this with certainty in a few years’ time when the scheme nears completion but I am optimistic. However, sadly, I have to acknowledge planning policies to carefully control height and massing have been absent to date in Guildford, and mostly still are.

I’m delighted the Lib Dems now appear to endorse the project. They voted against the earlier, better scheme just before the 2023 local elections, in what appeared as a rather naked appeal to the Nimby vote. After re-election they voted through an inferior design, losing the wider pedestrianisation which had excluded buses completely from North Street.

Hopefully this council, now safely installed, might revive the earlier, bus-free solution. It is not too late. Three leading transportation firms and the council’s own planners supported removing this cut through. All these experts recognised safety and air quality would not be helped by buses continuing to drive into North Street to the bus station. Nothing will ever change this truth.

Nonetheless, the project now underway is terrific news (although it will require a degree of patience by residents over the demands of construction traffic).

The developer appears really committed to delivering this challenging project. It navigated four years of intensive negotiations with GBC, not to mention tortuous ones with SCC. The latter’s transportation authority became the leading objector to wider pedestrianisation, claiming the importance of retaining buses driving through North Street as their excuse to reject the scheme.

Whilst North Street is an achievement, with the forthcoming dissolution of GBC it’s important our councillors confront a bigger issue and make sure they leave a planning legacy to protect and enhance Guildford. Time is running out but I hope they will at least endorse “Shaping Guildford’s Future”, the council’s own masterplan, as their preferred “direction of travel” rather than remaining silent.

Responses to Letter: I Am Delighted that a Start Has Been Made on North Street

H.Trevor Jones Reply

May 16, 2025 at 10:35 am

What’s wrong with bringing buses into North Street? Why would it have been better without them overall (notwithstanding what John Rigg says) and why make a political party issue about it?

I used always walk into town but now I’m growing older with more dodgy feet, it’s very useful to have a bus, especially coming home with my shopping. But the bus station and its access roads and junctions would be rather congested if all buses had to come both in and out via the northern access to avoid North Street.
David Ogilvie Reply

May 20, 2025 at 10:30 am

I think that Hugh Trevor Jones misunderstands the point that John Rigg is making. With the pedestrianisation of lower North Street the bus that he uses would still access the bus station. His bus would enter and leave from Woodbridge Road to the north. He would therefore not be inconvenienced and pedestrians would be free from noise, danger and pollution.