Letter: University Development Is What Guildford Needs

Published on: 13 Jan, 2014
Updated on: 13 Jan, 2014

From Gordon Bridger

Hon Alderman

Mr Melly’s valuable account of the huge and socially profitable development of the university and the importance of a knowledge based economy should be a critical factor in determining the planning Guildford’s future.

While the British economy once benefited from massive mineral resources these are now all gone and all we have left to earn or living in an increasingly competitive world, full of many talented and harder working people, are our intellectual skills, knowledge and education.

The coalition government’s policy is rightly seeking to move us away from consumer addiction towards productive export services such as those which the Surrey Research Park is promoting. Our national and local addiction to retail development based on out of date Guildford retail forecasts (2007) are precisely those which have made us an indebted nation.

One hopes that the new organisation of the Guildford Borough Council and clearer thinking which has emerged, will take into account the results of the university study and reshape our borough planning strategy.

One is not suggesting that retail should be abandoned in the centre but that we should concentrate on it being a high quality mixed development and that the, now much greater, more profitable, knowledge based services (three times greater in gross value added (GVA) terms) outside of the traditional centre should be the focus for expansion.