Save the old Byfleet fire station – and turn it into a community hub

This looks like a cause that is well worth supporting. Byfleet is a village that is stuck out on a limb at one end of Woking borough, and separated from West Byfleet by the M25. Nevertheless it is a community with a long history and character and identity. Now a group of residents have banded together to raise funds to save its tiny Victorian fire station, and to turn it into a community hub. They need £300,000 to buy the building, and are hoping Surrey county council will help with most of that – £250,000 to be exact – via their Your Fund initiative. But to show willing and commitment they need to raise £50,000 themselves.

The fire station has stood in Byfleet for over 135 years and is one of the village’s few remaining historic buildings. It was built in 1885, is Grade II listed, and served the Byfleet area as a fire station until the early 1960s.

The Byfleet Fire Station Trust is fundraising to acquire and restore the building.  Once the building is restored, safe and fit for use, the aim is to provide a community hub for all ages and abilities. The trust’s vision includes a coffee shop, educational and hobby-based workshops such as pop-up art galleries, IT repair hubs, community health and advice bureaux, bicycle repair hubs, craft workshops and pop-up craft/vintage markets, just to name a few. Also envisaged are events such as cinema nights, comedy nights and history exhibitions.

The building itself may look like something out of Toytown in its size – but it represents an initiative with a big heart. Do support it!

Thank you, Mr Gove! Plan to set up free school in Woking Park is legacy of former education secretary

It is remarkable how a rough gravel car park in Woking is proving an enduring lure for those in the education world – and even for those on the outer fringes of it. Some people may recall that in 2009 a campaign group fought off a plan by Woking College, backed by Woking council, to relocate its campus to Woking Park, and, in particular, the gravel car park, which is currently used by coaches taking school pupils for swimming lessons, and by other coaches bringing fans to Woking FC on match days. Now Woking council is having another go, this time backing a plan by Hoe Valley free school, which succeeded in getting permission from the Department for Education last year to set itself up, even though it had not found a home. The putative school wants to put temporary one- and two-storey buildings on the car park site in Woking Park for at least two years. Woking council is backing this plan, although it admits it has no idea yet where the school and football coaches will go instead. A school in Woking Park will obviously cause extra traffic problems as well. Surrey county council, which recently admitted it could not provide places for all secondary school pupils that need them in the county because of a government funding shortfall , is supporting the plan. It doesn’t really have any other choice. Free schools, the brainchild of former education secretary Michael Gove, are state-funded but not controlled by the local authority. Gove, who was reshuffled last year from education because of his growing unpopularity among parents and teachers, had been accused of raiding other parts of the education budget to fund free schools. According to the Woking Advertiser, nearby residents are very unhappy about the current plans, and wonder whether the free school’s “temporary” site might not have to become permanent, if other plans fall through.

Woking’s libraries: some good news

 

The tectonic plates at County Hall must be shifting a tad. Thanks to Lib Dem county councillor Diana Smith for passing on the good news that the threat to make Woking’s bigger branch libraries such as Knaphill, and West Byfleet, pictured above, volunteer-run has been lifted.  It’s a reflection of the wave of concern provoked by such proposals, which weren’t even likely to save that much money,  and which had touched even the Conservatives’ own bedrock of support. Meanwhile smaller libraries, such as New Haw, are having raise donations from tokens collected in Waitrose.