Article from the April edition of Look Local

How much do you REALLY care about the future of Bookham? 

Not much it appears.  The Bookham Vision Road Shows and initial survey data collection phase had three main objectives:  

- the first was to gather from you an understanding of what you like, dislike, and want for Bookham  

- the second was to allow us to report back on what we’re up to and what we plan to do  

- the third was to gauge awareness and interest levels from the people whose lives will be affected by any changes to Bookham that may occur in the future.   

This latter objective reflects our desire to present a fully representative plan, backed up with quantifiable supporting data to bodies such as local government, persuasive enough to influence their thinking. If you remember for example, MVDC said they’ll await the results of the Village Plan before taking further action on the Lower Shott supermarket development proposals. 

We do have input on likes, dislikes and wants from about 500 of you.  This is hardly a representative turn-out from the 5,500 plus households and 11,000 people that make up Bookham.  This is a serious concern if that truly reflects the current level of interest in parking, schooling, supermarket proposals and infill-housing to name but a few apparently hot potatoes.  Put simply, the same response levels for our main questionnaire that will appear later may result in some good community project proposals and maybe some traffic-related ideas, but will give us insufficient supportive data for a strong position on issues like the supermarket proposal at Lower Shott (which is still an open issue), school placements, housing developments or traffic related issues, leaving it up to those decision-making bodies to make up their own minds.  “Well, we did ask you”, they’ll say to those who protest after the event. 

We will use the input we have received so far to direct our research and planning – theoretically it tells us what’s important to you; or rather, what’s important to the 500 people who took the trouble to tell us. Are you happy to have this minority to speak on your behalf?  Are you happy for the “powers that be” to carry on as usual and ignore our voice? We tried to make it easy for you to tell us what matters – we delivered the survey twice to every household and provided a number of return “Drop-off” points”. It’s available on our website, and we held a series of events around Bookham to be in easy reach.  We went to a few of the schools to reach out to the mums and dads, but, with the greatest of respect and gratitude to those who came, it was mainly the grandparents who turned up.   

We shall now look in more detail at the issues that have been raised, and come up with a more focussed questionnaire and hopefully then a plan. 

We’re already getting to grips with some of the comments we’ve received about parking, for example.  The end of March saw us surveying parking at the Lower Shott car park.  We need to know where people park, how long for, and why.  And we will report back to you. 

The squareabout is the butt of many dislikes we have so far.  We’ll look at this much more; why it was introduced in the first place; the influence it has had on reported traffic accidents; the rules of conduct (on which I’ll bet we get several opinions – we’ll let you know the official version).  

So, how can you show you care?  How can you make sure you have your say in the way the village progresses (because it will change)?  Check out our website regularly and register for updates (www.bookhamvision.org), but most of all, if you care how the village develops – please tell us next time we ask you.  Your input could make the difference.