Petition response following SHLC meeting

The Surrey Heath Local Committee have provided a very fast response to the Hatches petition (decided at the Thu 11th Dec meeting).

The response was provided by Claire Saunders (Senior Countryside Access Officer) which gives a good summary of the issue and a recommendation for the committee to "note the report and Enterprise bid".

The particularly interesting part of the response is detailed in Claire's update...

Any proposed improvement works would need to raise the level of the path surface, and carry out drainage improvement works to reduce the number of occasions when the path floods. The path surface will also need to be renewed.
Any improvement scheme should consider widening the width of the surfaced section between the fences to capitalise on the available fence to fence width. It would also be beneficial to look at thinning the tree canopy to allow more light onto this public bridleway.

...all very sensible recommendations. She goes on to say...

The County Council have submitted a bid to the EM3 Local Enterprise Partnership (LEP) on 16 September 2014 in partnership with Hampshire County Council. The proposals in the bid are for improving routes for cyclists and walkers linking residential areas to railway stations and businesses. The bid is strongly linked to the economy and jobs.
At the time of writing, the EM3 LEP are considering the bid, but it is hoped that an announcement will be made at the beginning of December 2014.

This is all very encouraging and we can only hope for funding to be approved by the the EM3 Local Enterprise Partnership. This will hopefully be decided in the next week/two (early Dec 2014).