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.