Opinion: It’s Been a Year Since the General Election. Guildford Deserves Better from its MP

Published on: 19 Jul, 2025
Updated on: 21 Jul, 2025

By Adam Heilbron

former Conservative borough council candidate

A year has passed since the General Election and it’s a good time to do a performance review of our new MP, Zöe Franklin, of the Liberal Democrats. It’s not a reassuring picture.

Locally we see inaction on election promises made and inaction on holding Liberal Democrat-controlled Guildford Borough Council (GBC) to account.

For example, at election time, Ms Franklin said she supported the building of two new railway stations at Guildford East and Guildford West and had a plan to deliver them. One year on, we see minimal progress on studies, funding or otherwise for either station.

In fact, it seems possible provision for one station will not even be included in a forthcoming application for the Gosden Hill site, a major planning issue on which our MP has remained silent on thus far.

See also: Dragon Interview – MP Zöe Franklin Reviews Topical Issues

The closed footbridge over the Tumbling Bay weir.

Since the election, our Liberal Democrat MP has not felt the need to call out GBC once for their failings. By contrast the previous Conservative MP called out the lack of financial responsibility at the borough council, the lack of will or action to solve the Tumbling Bay Weir debacle, the failures of leadership and also the fact that our local council was under investigation by the Regional Organised Crime Unit for alleged fraud.

Nationally, Guildford’s MP has an important role speaking up for the constituency in Parliament. In this regard, the situation is no more encouraging.

In a recent independent GovSpendBase survey, conducted on July 1, which scores MPs and their visibility, Guildford’s MP came 583rd out of 650, scoring even below five of the seven Sinn Fein MPs from Northern Ireland, who don’t even take their seats in Parliament.

Ms Franklin will be Guildford’s MP until 2028 or 2029, or whenever Labour decides the time is right to ask the country’s view again. I hope that in the interest of residents across Guildford and our villages that we see much more concrete progress and meaningful activity from our MP in that time than we have over the past year.

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