Opinion: What Do Nearby Local Election Results Mean for Guildford?

Published on: 4 May, 2018
Updated on: 4 May, 2018

By Martin Giles

Imagine you live in Woking.

I know it is difficult for us Guildfordians. But try to get over the shock.

Now, how would you have voted in yesterday’s borough council election, in which ten of the 30 Woking Borough Council (click here for results) were up for grabs?

Received wisdom is that, like it or not, many voters have national issues and party loyalties mainly in mind when they cast their votes, not the issues under the control of their borough or district council. So let’s imagine you fall into that category.

Sick to the back teeth as we might be of the subject, Brexit is still a burning issue on our political landscape. And so it should be.

So for staunch Remainers the choice might have been made easy. The Lib Dem’s are the most clearly Remain party and the second most popular locally but, perhaps still suffering from the legacy of their coalition with the Tories, they continue to struggle to attract the level of support they once enjoyed.

Of course, there is still a considerable Remain contingent within the Conservative party, so perhaps, if you are one of those, you’d have stuck with the Blues and hoped for, at worst, a soft Brexit or at best a second referendum forced by the other parties (with help from the House of Lords).

Surely, you might feel, with Labour led by Corbyn, it is not a time to break ranks, even if this is a local election. The Corbyn fear factor is real.

And the increasingly Remain/soft Brexit stance of the Labour Party is going to also have made it easier for those Labour supporters, a small but persistent group of voters in Surrey, who, probably in this area mostly share Remain sentiments, to have stuck with Labour. And Corbyn remains popular within many sections of the Labour Party especially, perhaps, younger voters. The Corbyn attraction factor is real too.

But what if you would have voted on local issues?

Here the Woking Local Plan might have been a major influencer. But I don’t get the impression it is as controversial in Woking Borough as it is here in Guildford. So traditional Tory voters were probably less likely to switch their support, although this might have been a factor in the Lib Dems impressive surge and victory in the St John’s and Hook Heath ward that covers Mayford where “Hands Off Our Green Belt” signs have been seen for some time.

Some voters might be tempted to cast anti-Tory protest votes because of the state of the roads. Potholes are well known to be a subject often raised by voters on the doorstep when confronted by canvassers. Of course, this is a county council responsibility but it still might influence some as might the general economic policy of “austerity” which has cut council grants so savagely.

As elsewhere, the UKIP vote collapsed. There are no UKIP councillors left in Surrey now. Their support is likely to have disproportionately moved, perhaps with some reservations, to the Tories. But if so, those returning or moving to the Conservative fold as well as being concerned about a soft Brexit, might have been unsympathetic to the housing plans the Conservatives both nationally and locally are imposing on the South East, if they feel that high levels of net immigration are a factor.

Nonetheless, other than some internal friction within Woking Borough Council’s Tory group no major change of direction is likely or even possible now. As in Guildford, that ship has sailed.

But if the Conservatives imagine that Surrey voters are already over any disappointment with their party’s planning policy perhaps they should look at Tandridge, the only Surrey local authority area with a percentage of green belt higher than Guildford’s 89%.

Tandridge Tories lost nine seats to the Independents and Residents Association candidates – a pretty blunt message. It left the Conservatives hanging on to control of the council by a single seat.

Sam Gyimah, Conservative MP for East Surrey tweeted: “Tough night in Tandridge, on the back of local planning & housing issues.” (Read BBC report here.)

Whether this protest vote will last and spread and whether it could affect future general election results remains to be seen but is probably unlikely. Certainly Conservative leaders, reassured by such results as that in Reigate & Banstead, will have calculated that it won’t despite the loss of control in Mole Valley where the Lib Dems, whether because of Brexit or planning who knows, picked up two seats.

Anyway, even if the unimaginable happened and Independents took control of or held the balance of power at GBC, after next year’s scheduled local elections, what could they really do about the Local Plan now? After all, nothing can even be done, it seems, about the widely hated plan for the monstrous redevelopment of Guildford railway station.

The fact is that Localism, for planning, is dead.

The government, tackling only the supply side of the housing issue, has decided that we have to have big numbers of extra houses even if we are already the most densely populated region of the EU and even at the cost of some green belt. There appears to be nothing we can do about it.

What do you think? Did you vote in the Woking election? If so what decided your vote? Or if you live in Guildford what lessons if any, can be inferred from the results in Woking, Tandridge or elsewhere? Please use the “Leave a Reply” feature below.

Responses to Opinion: What Do Nearby Local Election Results Mean for Guildford?

Martin Elliott Reply

May 4, 2018 at 5:06 pm

I don’t see any comment on the issue of unnecessary ID checks in Woking.

The Government seems to think there is / will be an issue of personation, people knowing an electors address falsely voting. None of the independent NGO thinks this is a significant problem, last election reports were 45 incidents nationally!!

However, Woking was one of the boroughs selected to require IDs.

As each test borough has different ID requirements, it is difficult to know how the test will be evaluated.

Anyway, what happened in Woking? How many electors didn’t bother to vote becauase of ID worries? Or were on the register but had no ID to present?
Bernard Parke Reply

May 4, 2018 at 8:19 pm

It will be a long time before the electorate in Guildford will forget the last election slogan that declared The Conservatives say The Green belt will stay.

Of course there were other pledges which referred to low council tax and again car park charges which were to be frozen only to find that within two weeks of the poll they were increased.

Before I am excused of being anti-Conservative, perhaps I should reiterate that I have been a life long Tory member serving the party in most offices from Young Conservative divisional chairman through to constituency chairman.

I would also mention that I am no longer a member of any national party these days and I believe local affairs are best resolved by independent people whose views are not clouded by party dogma.
Jim Allen Reply

May 5, 2018 at 4:51 pm

4.5 million cubic meters short on the water front in the HMA (Woking, Waverley, Guildford), 47,000 additional cars on the roads. Projected water deficit of 292 cubic metres per year in the South East.

The proposed Abingdon reservoir has been thrown out by the planning inspectorate. Guildford unable to build 400 homes per year yet planning for 600-plus.

The reality is these local ‘proposals’ to build all these houses are another false story – I won’t call them plans.

Plans means the research has been undertaken and all aspects have been taken into account.

Not just spurious unsubstantiated ‘need’ to house people.

All the parties have fallen into the same twitterarty trap.

When the sewer failure in Burpham last year disclosed that our sewers across the country had not been cleaned or inspected for 40 plus years, the immediate response from all parties Ofwat, TW and CCwater and others was ‘it would cost more’ if you wanted them cleaned proactively.

Why? for 40 years every household across the country has paid for them to be cleaned maintained and kept flowing, yet it never happened.

It is the very same with the alleged housing numbers ‘build more so the supply will exceed demand and the price will drop’. A total nonsense, house values have never actually dropped since the 1970s, equity may have wavered but house prices never did.

So who would I vote for? Someone who understands the real problems and can plan with consideration for all aspects of community life.
Monica Jones Reply

May 5, 2018 at 5:14 pm

I don’t agree when you say there’s nothing you can do about it. That;’s never the case. Remember the poll tax.

It’s true that people often vote differently at general and local elections, but what one has to be aware of these days is the pressure put upon local councils by government.

Guildford, for instance, has had to make massive cuts in all areas trying to achieve a Rolls Royce-style service on a Morris Minor engine.

The government change planning laws and enforce local authorities to build where they would rather not. They (government) would do better to stop developers land banking and ‘encourage’ them to build on available plots.

Government, central and local, should make sure that when a developer gets planning permission on the proviso that X amount of the housing is for affordable use, they should not be allowed to renage on that agreement.

Finally, at no point anytime since the referendum on Brexit has Labour said they would reverse the will of the people. This has been said or implied so many times people are believing.
Gordon Bridger Reply

May 7, 2018 at 4:16 pm

Congratulations in attempting to sort out what we can learn from the local election results.

At the national level, for which they are unfortunately a barometer, it was defeat for Labour despite gains, because in mid-term elections and with the current Government they should have done far better.

Corbyn has failed to convince the middle-of-the-road voters that he would be a convincing leader.

The real issues in local government have little to do with national issues, although the tight control over council’s expenditure by the Treasury is a real problem.

In Guildford the council is not allowed to increase Band D tax by more than £5. And this applies uniformly all over the country and seriously inhibits economic growth, a policy more fitting a Soviet system than that what we claim is free market economy.

Our real conflicts are those between urban and rural interests and those in favour of economic growth and those against it. But with such a tight and arbitrary Treasury control councils have been driven to cuts which in more prosperous areas at least should not be necessary.

There are still policies and decisions which need challenging in Guildford. Little sign of opposition except from some Conservative councillors who get into trouble and from the redoutable Bernard Parke, not a councillor, but who fills a badly needed role.

What we really need are independent councillors who represent their wards, not national interests.

Epsom is a rare example, and Tandridge seems to be moving that way – best of luck to them.
Mary Bedforth Reply

May 8, 2018 at 12:29 pm

‘The fact is that Localism, for planning, is dead.’

So what was the point of the lengthy and costly planning decisions? The dissent of the residents has been absorbed by this website and others.

Will the Tory voters carry on voting Tory even if the roads become car parks, the countryside disappears little by little and we breathe polluted air?

Do they know that many of the large property development companies are donors to the Tories?

Democracy! Where are you?

Fascism – my definition.

The subjugation of the individual’s will and freedom by an overweening state.

Humanity withers, freedom of speech is stifled and the soul dies. Self preservation becomes a dominant drive.