Plenty of praise for Petersfield Hospital

We don’t know how lucky we are in Petersfield: our own hospital and an urgent treatment centre, which is often open seven days a week from 8am to 8pm.

I had to go there twice recently. It was very efficient and well-run. The staff were lovely, we had TV to watch and drinks were available.

They gave us the pills we needed and also can link you to your doctor. Wonderful!

Iris Holt

Petersfield

Less praise for Farnham Hospital  

I read in your article regarding the recent wellbeing gathering at Farnham hospital. There was a lot of back slapping and congratulations all round from the feedback apparently. 

Having been invited by my practice, I felt that I should attend. Bring photo ID, never asked for, feedback, never asked. Parking, absolute nightmare and I was lucky. Don't forget Covid jabs are going on at the moment. 

Four hundred attendees in three hours, queues upstairs, queues to get upstairs and not enough space to barely walk around and view what was on offer, after all many were being assisted in wheelchairs by younger members of family or carers. 

I felt it was a shambles, perhaps I am too young and capable, but I couldn't get out fast enough. 

To be classed as a success because of numbers on the previous year when better targeting of age and abilities and even more space available would be an improvement, after all these referrals had come from the healthcare practices who are supposed to know their patients. 

G. Andrews 

Alma Way  

Farnham

Road closures caused chaos

Who is to blame for the chaos on Remembrance Sunday morning when traffic into Farnham down Folly Hill into Castle Street was forced to U-turn, divert by four miles to go back uphill, down through Hale and then come into Farnham through East Street? No warning signs at the top of Folly Hill. None even coming down past the roundabout at Drovers Way or at the Farnham Park car park near the cricket ground. 

A stream of vehicles was flowing down and then up again for some time when the local authority closure of Castle Street was implemented to enable the Remembrance Day parade to assemble.

Notices of the closure had been posted in the previous days in the town itself. Not exactly helpful to anyone not happening to go there and the drivers caught out by this oversight by our local bureaucracy were undoubtedly very frustrated.

Nobody objects to the closure itself. We do object to not placing the signage that alerts traffic to the closure. 

Ian Sargeant

Farnham Road

Ewshot

Developers should pay for traffic disruption

In his letter (October 31, 2024), Mr Meade suggested that Wates’s permission to proceed came only because the Farnham Town Council’s challenge was unwittingly bungled by its own lawyers. This reminds me that we have seen nothing yet in the development’s documentation that might yet prevent a repetition of last year’s extended and (for Farnham) costly closure of West Street for waterworks ahead of the Coxbridge development.

I wrote last year to suggest that the Waverley Lane development could, if allowed, be a similar costly nuisance in the making, and that Farnham should be compensated by the developers for its consequences.

In this case, Waverley Lane is a major artery from Farnham to locations to the east, and to the A3. In the opposite (incoming) direction, it is also a busy route that feeds indirectly onto Farnham Station’s level crossing. This in turn is one of only two effective routes north into Farnham or onto the A31. Both routes are traffic blocks at busy times, and feeding into one of them is Waverley Lane which is already a bottleneck of its own.

The localised release of fresh commuter traffic from some 150 new households into this junction will itself clearly be a permanent frustration with knock-on effects for much of South Farnham.

However, an even greater challenge faces us during the intervening construction period. The provision of fresh water and sewerage for new houses on both sides of Waverley Lane, together with associated major road rebuilding, will require this already overloaded road to be closed for a long time, perhaps longer than the six months at West Street last year.

In addition to the inconvenience, especially for residents of south Farnham, there will be a significant financial consequence for Farnham’s retail and hospitality businesses, exactly as with West Street in 2023 when trade simply went elsewhere.

This calamity should not be endured in silence by the town. It’s likely the cost can be readily calculated, however, from figures which the council undoubtedly collected both from the ‘West Street Experience’ and in its preparations for the new Town Centre Plan.

I suggest that whatever six or seven-figure sum this amounts to should summarily be collected by the council from the developers prior to any work starting, and put towards sensible town road improvements.

The developers could in consequence be celebrated for what might otherwise be found to have been an accidental fait accompli for a locally undesired and very controversial scheme. Moreover, they will doubtless be able easily to recoup any such pre-payment by charging a modest premium on each of their fine new houses.

Dr Clarence Eng

Aveley Lane

Farnham