Letter: Surely We Should Be Working Together to Solve the Tumbling Bay Weir Problem

Published on: 27 Feb, 2023
Updated on: 27 Feb, 2023

From: James Walsh

Labour borough councillor for Stoke

In response to: Tumbling Bay Weir ‘Not Our Responsibility’ Says GBC and Choose ‘Do Nothing’ Option

This Tumbling Bay Weir situation is absolutely disgraceful. It has taken more than three years to get to a point where everyone who might have a stake in repairing the weir bridge – Guildford Borough Council, Surrey County Council the National Trust and Thames Water – has effectively turned their backs on it, leaving another broken mess in Guildford to complement the North Street badlands and empty shops that already blight the town.

I fully understand the costs involved in repairing the bridge, and also the fact that successive Tory governments, since 2010, have stripped funding from local councils and other organisations, but surely it’s not beyond the ken of these organisations to work together and come up with a solution.

Or can one of the developers who will benefit from lucrative opportunities in the town centre and beyond be persuaded to help out under Section 106? The bridge is, after all, an important link from the river to the town centre and, to boot, not far from the old Debenhams site.

Leaving the site as it is simply cannot be the solution to this; so will somebody show some leadership and bang collective heads together? Or shall we just let Guildford crumble into becoming a third-rate town with a built environment to match?