00:01Okay, Greg, we're here at Hickley's Corner, a very busy junction in Farnham, which has obviously had troubles in the
00:07past.
00:07Can you just talk us through why you're here today?
00:10Yes, so we've had some really, really disappointing news from the government that they are cancelling the proposed changes to
00:17the A31 Hickley's Corner junction behind me.
00:21As people who live in Farnham will know, this is a really, really busy and quite dangerous junction.
00:26Unfortunately, we had a fatality here at the beginning of the year and other people have had serious injuries.
00:32But it's not just about pedestrian safety. Anyone who uses this junction knows how busy it gets, the congestion it
00:37gets,
00:37especially when the barrier is down at the station. And it's really a junction that needs changing.
00:43Now, Surrey County Council have been working for years, really hard, to pull together some plans to improve this junction.
00:50And up till recently, the government, the last Conservative government, had been in favour of funding this project.
00:55But I got a call on Thursday evening from the Transport Minister, the Roads Minister, to say he was cancelling
01:00the money and scrapping it.
01:02And that is an absolute disaster for the people of Farnham and the people who want to transfer, especially north
01:09to south, through Farnham.
01:11So I'm going to say we really need to have a solution to this junction. So I'm going to be
01:17trying to get residents to continue to support this change to the junction,
01:21to speak to the new West Surrey Council, who are going to be in charge of this area from April,
01:26to see if there is a solution that we can bring.
01:28But I need everyone's support. I'll be writing to the council and I'll be putting together a package that will
01:35hopefully get support of residents.
01:37So hopefully we can get this moving. But the government has really let us down on this.
01:41They let us down when they were looking at the A3 tunnel through Hindhead.
01:45We had to step in as the Surrey County Council to fund that. Surrey County Council is disappearing.
01:52The new West Surrey Authority now perhaps is going to have to step up and take it on.
01:55But that's not fair on them. It should have been the government and they've really let us down.
02:00Yeah, obviously really disappointing. Was it sort of blindsided? You know, shocked? How were you sort of, you know?
02:05Well, I mean, I have been writing to the government since the beginning of this year about it.
02:10I wrote to them three or four times in March. I asked parliamentary questions.
02:13I raised a point of order because I had no response.
02:16And I even wrote to the Prime Minister a couple of months ago to try to get an answer.
02:20So I was suspicious about what the government were doing and finally they've come out of the woodwork and told
02:25us
02:25that they're going to let Farnham down and scrap the money for this really, really vital improvement.
02:30And obviously, you know, going forward next, you've already kind of outlined there about residents
02:34sort of getting involved and making their views known. What was the best way?
02:38So I'm going to be pulling together a petition to try to persuade the government to change its mind
02:42but also bring together all the relevant people from Surrey County Council, from the new West Surrey Authority
02:47to see if we can find a solution that works for the Junction.
