Town Centre Master Plan Stage 1 Approved - UPDATED 17-6

24 May 2021

Stage 2 Now Approved

The Guildford Council Executive has considered the outputs of the first phase of the Guildford Economic Regeneration Programme (GERP) on 25th May. The Council executive approved the funding to move to Phase 2 of the programme.

The first stage of the plan focused on understanding the major challenges in our town centre and asks questions about flooding, traffic, transportation, opening up the riverside, and connecting our High Street with the historic Guildford Wharf. Stage 1 makes no decisions but investigates what might be possible.

Leader of the Council, Cllr Joss Bigmore commented:

"I am very pleased that we are moving forward with our plans to revitalise and restore our town centre while preserving its attraction for the next generation. Our ambition is to ensure we recover from past decline to meet the needs of society, including introducing the concept of a 15-minute town. This is a town where your home, work, leisure and culture are all within a 15-minute walk.

"The future is our young people and those growing up here or moving into the area. They want affordable, sustainable living with high-quality public space, leisure and culture with walking and cycling a key part of the new vision."

Stage 2, includes the funding for the consultation which we plan to run from this summer until July 2022. We will be asking residents, businesses and other town centre partners for their views on the plans. In the meantime, please email your views to Economic.Regeneration@guildford.gov.uk and we will be in touch when the consultation period begins.

Limited Public Information

A limited amount of public information has been published on the results of Stage 1. These are attached below, as 1) Council Paper, 2) Executive Summary from the Consultants Team, and 3) a set of slides focussing on Spatial Strategy.

At present papers on matters such as

Infrastructure Report
Flood Study Report
Planning Strategy Report
Competitive Position Report
Strategic Spatial Masterplan Report
Guildford Movement Strategy Report

Points of Interest

The project appears to be evolving into several different sub-projects.

A project focused on the Wey Corridor and the one-way system to redevelop brownfield areas of Guildford, open up the riverside, and revamp the transport infrastructure for all modes of transport. David Leonard Design Architects have already provided first impressions of the potential of this area.
The Heritage Area including the Lower and Upper High Street. This is an area that doesn’t require redevelopment but needs re-invigorating by planned change of use and possible transport changes.
There are more outlying areas of the town e.g. London Road Station, and Bright Hill that may be considered for change.

Note we have marked up a map to show the boundaries of the various areas - boundaries in some case are not totally accurate

All these study areas are supported by work to understand how infrastructure issues can be solved, roads, electrical supply, water supply, sewage. The provision of proper Flood Protection is also crucial to any plans.

There is discussion in the papers provided of the Transport/Traffic Issues including ideas on Parking and maybe a zone of restricted traffic - maybe road charging.

Comment

The Society notes:

A lack of any ambition to revise the west side of the station, and or upgrade the Farnham Road Bridge.
The Solum scheme at the station appears to have prevented any new crossing of the Wey as proposed by GVG.
The designs shown so far major on making the Weyside paths more usable for cyclists and pedestrians. We think this is a solution suitable for leisure use which is a supplement to designing proper active travel corridors.