Farewell to the Canopy? What a shocking waste of money

This is big news. The likely demolition of the notorious Canopy in Albion Square  outside Woking station comes as a shock – but is also not that surprising. The out-of-place structure has dwarfed, darkened and overshadowed its surroundings since its construction just nine years ago – and any environmental claims made for it at the outset have long since been discredited, and held up to ridicule.

In 2007 Woking council hailed its photovoltaic panels intended to generate solar energy as “an invaluable source of renewable energy for decades to come” – and even Prince Charles came to have a look.  However, critics who said that it would never generate the levels of power promised were soon proved right.

In 2009 a national newspaper claimed “the £4m project … produced only enough electricity in one year to power a single 100-watt lightbulb for just 59 days”. At the time the council said it was confident that the Canopy would eventually hit its green targets, and blamed “inclement weather” for its initial poor performance.

At a public meeting in 2013, Woking’s chief executive, Ray Morgan, conceded, with refreshing candour, that the Canopy had been “a disaster in its implementation”. But he also claimed, more surprisingly, that “it was never an environmental project. It was meant to be part of a scheme to provide a gateway to Woking at the station. But the private sector walked away from the project. We have learned lessons from that.”

The Canopy had been described as the “gateway” to the town when it was hoped developers would help reshape Albion Square around it. Now developers think the only hope for a future Albion Square is to knock the “unsightly” structure down. A planning application says its demolition “would significantly improve the quality of the public space at Albion Square and the arrival experience into the town centre”.

The saga of Woking Canopy, quite frankly, makes one question the thinking behind any future huge project unveiled by the council, which is understood to have amassed enormous levels of borrowing over recent years – borrowing that it always seems to justify as investment in the future. Have councillors actually been operating proper levels of scrutiny that we expect of them? Or just agreeing to such mega-projects on the nod?

Whatever lessons may or may not have been learned from the Albion Square debacle, some “gateway” the Canopy turned out to be. It is a modern-day folly, and has proved a scandalous waste of money. The Local Government Ombudsman should be asked to investigate the whole affair.

The thoughts of Woking’s Ray Morgan

How much do one man’s views matter? Quite a lot when he’s the chief executive of Woking borough council. That’s why it was fascinating to listen to the views of Ray Morgan – who, he acknowledged himself, has been likened to Hitler –  at a public debate, Is Woking Becoming a More Sustainable Town? held at Christ Church, Woking on Saturday morning. At the packed meeting of around 60 concerned, committed people – the third of six Woking Debates initiated by Woking Action for Peace –  “Mr Woking” revealed himself to be a radical with passionate and outspoken opinions. Here are some of his quotes from the meeting:

• “We need to have a wider debate with faith communities on gender and equality issues”
• [On food waste] “I would treble the price of food”
• “Every proposal by us to provide homes for people is opposed by people who already have them”
• [On conservation] “There is this paranoiac behaviour about keeping everything as it is”
• “The green belt will be reduced. It has to be reduced.”
• “Silver birches are an intrusive weed”
• “We need to think of Woking in 2050 as being like the Iberian peninsula”
•  “In Woking, when we don’t get it right, we knock it down and start again”
• “The Canopy was a disaster in its implementation. But it was never an environmental project. It was meant to be part of a scheme to provide a gateway to Woking at the station. But the private sector walked away from the project. We have learned lessons from that.”

With Woking’s MP Jonathan Lord, above,  in the audience, Morgan, who made clear at the outset that he was speaking personally, rather than on behalf of the council, criticised the coalition government for backtracking on green pledges, talked of wind turbines along the M25, and added that he was totally opposed to the “short-sighted” freeing-up of the planning process, which he predicted would rebound on the government when people put up “ridiculous extensions” right next door to “their [the government’s] supporters”. He also suggested that the provision of winter fuel allowance for all those over 60 was “criminally absurd”, and that McLaren’s failure to provide a visitor centre in Woking despite a planning pledge “remains an embarrassment”, although he at the same time paid tribute to the vital contribution that the Formula One company makes to the UK economy as well as Woking’s.

There were many thoughtful and searching questions put by members of the audience, many from local religious and campaigning groups, but too many to deal with in detail here.

Jonathan Lord’s response included the need to get an attack on the previous Labour government out of his system: “They had all the money and threw it all away.” He defended the government’s environmental stance, mentioning its “fantastic initiative” on home insulation, and then asked a question of Morgan: “How does the council run itself, when we have such a powerful chief executive with such strong ideas, and differences of opinion between the CEO and many councillors?”  In other words, how does Ray Morgan always seem to get his way?

Morgan replied by conceding that “various people accuse me of being a megalomaniac”. It was true that he promoted an “environmental and social agenda”,  but “at the end of the day I do what the council decides”.

In these days of little or no reporting of council proceedings by hard-pressed local newspapers, it was a rare and rewarding opportunity to hear the views of  Woking’s chief executive – a man of undoubted ideals and vision – on a wide range of subjects.

Near the end of the meeting a businessman spoke from the floor about moving both his home and his firm from Guildford to Woking. “We should be proud of what goes on in Woking,” he said, although he added the rider that there should be more facilities for the youth of the town.

PHOTOGRAPHS: PETER BREDDAL