Congratulations to the volunteers of The Sunbury Embroidery Gallery who received The Queen's Award for Voluntary Service for their contribution to Sunbury-on-Thames over the past 23 years.

The award was presented by HRH Princess Alexandra on Tuesday 2 July 2019.

Thank you to Cllr Vivienne Leighton, Ward Councillor for Shepperton Town, who nominated the volunteers for this award.

Over a career spanning more than 25 years, award winning jazz guitarist Nigel Price has become widely acknowledged as one of the hardest working musicians in the business.

Musically, his blend of flowing bebop lines, deep blues sensibility and his mastery of chording continue to delight audiences and fellow musicians alike. He is a regular performer at London’s Ronnie Scott’s Jazz Club where he has made more than 500 appearances.  

Together with the Terence Collie trio, Nigel will be performing at the Riverside Arts Centre, 59, Thames Street, Sunbury on Sunday 11th August at 7.45pm.

For booking details click here

We are very happy to support The Surrey Environment Partnership who will be running a Surrey-wide campaign in August and September which urges Surrey residents and businesses to be vigilant when employing traders to dispose of their waste.

Residents across Sunbury will be all too aware of the blight and degrading effects of fly-tipping in our roads and amenity spaces.

If you employ someone to take your waste away and they don’t dispose of it properly, it’s you who can be fined up to £400. To avoid being hit in the wallet, you will need to do two things:

1. Check your builder/trader is a registered waste carrier, and
2. Obtain a receipt for the disposal of your waste.

For further details please click here

Heathrow’s final consultation has already started and runs until 13 September 2019.

This is one of the largest infrastructure projects this country has undertaken and these plans may have a significant impact on the Spelthorne Community.

You are urged to respond using the email option shown in the leaflet and to copy your comments to Spelthorne Borough Council, also shown in the leaflet.

To view, click here

The next Music Night at Sunbury Cricket Club is on Friday 12^th July when the Club is delighted to present for the first time JUMP 66. It’s always nice to welcome a brand-new name to the Club, especially when a band comes onto our radar who are such a perfect fit for the Club’s traditional fare.  JUMP 66 are a high-energy jump blues band playing storming West Coast, Jump and Chicago blues, some forgotten R&B gems and forays into rock steady bluebeat as well.

They have been around for several years, played at Glastonbury in 2014 and are regulars at the Ealing Blues Festival, headlining the main Saturday stage last year – they also regularly feature at the Swanage Blues Festival. They’re a resident band at the Ain't Nothing But the Blues bar in Soho, and return regularly to the Ramjam in Kingston and the Crawdaddy. Two of the band are current members of Dave Finnegan's Commitments soul band, and the keyboards player is in Cliff Bennett's Rebel Rousers, so they have a highly credible musical pedigree, and their stage show is dynamic and highly entertaining. An evening of great entertainment in the proper Music Night tradition can be guaranteed.

Find out more and hear some music at www.jump66blues.com.

Food will be available as usual from about 7.15. Starts 8.30, Price £7.50 on the door. We look forward to seeing you there.

We are sad to report the recent death of Patrick Curran, the founding Chairman and former President of The Lower Sunbury Residents’ Association after a long and harrowing illness – our sympathies go to his widow Patsy.

Pat founded the Association  in 1972 in order to fight a campaign to get the TP26 project abandoned – TP26 was a plan which had been on the stocks at Surrey County Council which envisaged a by-pass road across the residential area of Lower Sunbury along what is now Hawke Park from Staines Road East, across French St., The Avenue, Green Street and the Green Belt to the west of Sunbury to the A244.

A long-time resident of The Avenue, Pat, working with Frank Burman as Secretary and John Smith as President,  gradually built LOSRA into an active, visible and effective campaigning force dedicated to protecting the environment, amenities and quality of life in Lower Sunbury, as well as continuing to fight the battle over TP26.

Pat was a senior civil servant who worked closely with Government ministers, he was used to working at a high-powered level and had the confidence. expertise and gravitas to deal with Spelthorne and Surrey County Council officers and elected members, as well as the various vested interests on their own terms. In doing that, he set the standards for those that worked alongside him and in subsequent years to follow, and he also established for people taking an interest in getting involved in LOSRA’s activities that it was a serious organisation that knew what it was doing and was able to make things happen.

Through Pat’s diligence and perseverance, the TP26 scheme was finally abandoned in the late ‘80s, but the fight did not stop there, because Surrey County Council then proposed including in the new Local Plan a scheme to build houses on the TP26 land. Pat fought the scheme at the Local Plan Public Enquiry, and succeeded in getting it removed from the Plan. Subsequent campaigning and pressure by LOSRA on Surrey and Spelthorne Council succeeded in getting the land designated as public open space to be a linear park.

Inevitably, once the Association became visible and started getting involved in local affairs other key amenity issues emerged which Pat took on. The owner of Orchard Meadow at that time, a housebuilder, wanted to develop it with housing, although it was technically Green Belt. Pat orchestrated the opposition over two decades, and eventually, early in the new century, after the Meadow passed into new ownership, Spelthorne Council were persuaded to take the unusual step of compulsorily purchasing it as public open space and creating a Village Green.

Parallel to campaigning on TP26, Pat realized that the problem of traffic in Thames Street, which TP26 was intended to relieve, needed to be addressed. LOSRA put pressure on the authorities to introduce a lorry ban in Thames Street – until that time HGVs used the road – and once it was in place monitored the road regularly to identify offending vehicles.

During the 1970s consultation on the new Surrey Minerals Plan relating to gravel extraction began, and Pat took up the cudgels, making written submissions and appearing at the public enquiry to argue against the inclusion of local sites like Vicarage Farm, Watersplash Farm, and, yes, even Sunbury Park. LOSRA succeeded in pushing our site down the priority list over several decades until the recent decision that Watersplash Farm should be worked was taken.

During the 1980s a helicopter service between Heathrow and Gatwick airports was established, which flew directly across Lower Sunbury, causing an highly intrusive noise nuisance which many residents found very troublesome. Pat succeeded in getting a clause inserted in the operating licence stipulating that the service should cease operation when the M25 was completed. Once it was completed, inevitably the airlines applied to continue the service anyway. LOSRA, acting more or less alone, with Pat travelling daily to the public enquiry in central London for several weeks, argued against the airlines’ expensive lawyers, and persuaded the Inspector to end the service.

Housebuilding companies have owned the land to the west of Lower Sunbury for many years, and continually submitted planning applications for housing schemes. Pat led the opposition to these schemes and established the principle of opposing development on Green Belt which LOSRA has pursued ever since.

As a result of the professional and considered way in which LOSRA presented its arguments to borough and county councils, a style and approach which Pat was instrumental in developing, LOSRA acquired a credibility which ensured that has always had an effective voice in the corridors of local power, with both council officers and elected members obliged to take the Association seriously as genuinely and effectively representing the interests of local residents.

The LOSRA newsletter and its membership process were part of the infrastructure which was created under Pat’s chairmanship, and that infrastructure has been built on to help keep the Association thriving in the years after Pat relinquished his involvement in its day-to-day activities.

The community owes Pat a significant debt and his legacy will always be visible not just in the very existence of LOSRA as a well-organised force for good, but also in the success stories that have given us the likes of Hawke Park and the Orchard Meadow village green.