Update 11 March 2025: Claygate vision action plan
Since May 2024 we have been collaborating with Claygate Parish Council on a vision and action plan for Claygate. This follows the community survey conducted by the Claygate Village Association which highlighted 6 key areas of interest:
- Shops and businesses
- Housing
- Transport and parking
- Health and wellbeing
- Leisure and recreation
- Environment
Most of all, the Claygate community aspires to a thriving village, with community at its heart, while retaining its green and leafy character.
Based on these responses, Claygate Parish Council and Elmbridge Borough Council have created a draft vision for Claygate covering 3 themes:
- Thriving Claygate
- Sustainable living
- Our village community.
Thriving Claygate includes exploring business initiatives to protect and promote independent shops, improving village parking and public transport access, promoting a café culture and improving the pedestrian environment.
Sustainable living in Claygate includes promoting good design, increasing the diversity of housing tenures to include affordable housing and small units, promoting active travel and increasing street scene planting.
Our village community sets out to explore the opportunities for a gym or other physical fitness facility in the village, to improve the awareness of health and wellbeing related activities and to establish a multi-purpose community hub.
The next step is to share the draft vision and action plan with the community and seek their views. During the consultation, we will also provide more details on the proposed feasibility study for Torrington Lodge car park, as this topic is a key issue for the community.
On 19 March, Cllr Caroline James, Portfolio Holder for Planning, will be asked to approve consultation on the Claygate draft vision and action plan, proposed to take place for 4 weeks from Thursday 3 April to Tuesday 1 May.
Details of the consultation will follow and will include an in person drop-in session, hosted by Elmbridge Borough Council and Claygate Parish Council.
We look forward to continuing to work with the Claygate community and in helping to deliver for them.
Update 9 February 2024
In recent months Elmbridge Borough Council has been having informal and productive discussions on the way forward for Claygate with key local stakeholders including the Claygate Village Association (CVA) and Claygate Parish Council (CPC). This is a collaborative project which aims to engage the Claygate community in shaping the future of the village. CVA through Claygate the Way Forward have been foundational to our project.
We are committed to shared aims which include….
- Protect and enhance sense of community.
- Enable community groups to grow and succeed.
- Continue to support a thriving local economy.
- Ensure Sustainable Elmbridge aims are established in Claygate.
- Agree future for underperforming council asset - Torrington Lodge car park - in line with community views and need to support financial resilience of the council.
- Reinforce collaborative working approach to agree and action shared ambitions for Claygate.
We all agree that engaging with the community is key to the success of our ambitions for Claygate. To that end, I am incredibly grateful to the CVA as they will undertake a comprehensive residents survey in March, the data from which will be used to create realistic and creative ideas for Claygate’s future.
I would encourage all Claygate residents to support this survey. CVA is an independent and non-party political charity, and I am very grateful for the work being done by the many volunteer residents, the energy and passion they display is a credit to the village they represent.
I look forward to viewing the results report from the survey and working with the CVA, the Parish Council and Claygate community on shaping the future of Claygate Village.
Bruce McDonald,
Leader, Elmbridge Borough Council
Update November 2023
We are all proud of Claygate, the shops, the businesses and the sense of community. As such we want to ensure that we have a thriving and sustainable Claygate, in line with our 2030 Vision.
A few months ago, having listened to the views of Claygate residents and businesses, we concluded that the most positive way forward was to undertake a wider community engagement in which all voices in Claygate are heard and where all opinions and views on a thriving Claygate could be expressed.
We have been considering how to approach this engagement in the best way and you will see in this short presentation our initial thoughts on that collaboration.
What is crucially important now is engaging with the community and key stakeholders on how we take this forward together.
We look forward to the discussions in the months ahead and to supporting our shared ambitions for Claygate.
Cllr Bruce McDonald,
Leader, Elmbridge Borough Council