Farnham traders David Quick, owner of Borelli's Wine Bar & Grill, and Steve Hamilton, owner of Hamilton's Tea House, met with Greg Stafford on March 28, 2025 to discuss how traffic problems in the town centre caused by the ongoing Farnham town centre improvement project are harming trade.
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00:00These temporary lights and the stack-up it's causing, especially the rush hour from 8.30
00:11in the morning, where it's gridlocked, all the way back to beyond Firgrove Hill, over
00:17the bridge, and it goes right up to Crondal Lane and beyond, so it is a problem, and as
00:28I said to Greg, what I've noticed with these lights is they stay red for almost two minutes,
00:33one minute, forty-eight seconds, and you've got virtually no traffic coming right out
00:39of Castle Street, so you've got, everything is brought to a halt for a long time for very
00:46few cars, but then the lights only stay green for one minute.
00:52So the sequencing of the lights, do you think is wrong?
00:54I don't think the sequencing is wrong.
00:56So we've got the Fon Infrastructure Programme meeting just after the meeting, so I will
01:01raise that with them straight away. I've spoken to the Cabinet Member for Highways this morning
01:06as well, and he said that there's a business meeting next week, I believe, so if you don't
01:11know about it, and businesses don't know about it, please either get in touch with
01:15Surrey or come through me and I can point you in the right direction, because I think
01:18it's really important that businesses actually tell the council what's going on as well,
01:23because I can tell them that it's far better than people who are actually working on this
01:27street, who've got businesses who don't know how to do it, can tell them. But I think,
01:30you know, simple things like resequencing the lights is something they should be able
01:34to do relatively straightforwardly, and I think if that's going to help with the situation
01:38then they should get on with it as well.
01:40From the councils to the project team, all of the retailers, the people that live in
01:46town, more importantly, people that have got a real sense of sway within social media,
01:50I believe you'd say, like yourselves, you're heralds, you say, actually, plan on this opening,
01:54the shops are all buzzing, all the retailers are here, desperate, to look after you, make
02:00sure that you have a great experience, and, you know, the traffic isn't as bad as it looks.
02:04It's not, actually.
02:05So visually, it looks terrible. You've been coming out from outside the town, coming,
02:08you think, oh, I'm not seeing this, but actually coming, trying it, you'll actually see that
02:14a lot of the time.
02:15It might be a few minutes delayed, but actually, it's a great experience.
02:19We are very much still open to business.