DORKING Library is a step closer to moving to a new home despite opposition from people in the town.

An application has been submitted to change the use of a proposed site at 7, 8 and 9 St Martins Walk from retail units to a library and multi-media centre.

This is seen by service-provider Surrey County Council (SCC) as the potential new home for the town’s library, which is currently based at Pippbrook House.

SCC’s lease for the venue ran out at the beginning of this year and officers said in May they were negotiating on a new venue and understood that Pippbrook was likely to be used for housing.

They spoke of an “exciting” new library venue in the heart of the town and said Pippbrook no longer offered the best service it could because of its size and inflexible layout.

Mole Valley District Council (MVDC), which owns Pippbrook, has since offered a new lease to SCC for the building, but it remains part of a consultation to discover the preferred use of this and other Dorking sites.

There have been calls to remove Pippbrook from a list of potential housing sites, in light of targets previously set for the provision of new homes having now been removed by the new coalition government.

Councillors at MVDC have agreed to review the status of the site as soon as possible, and there is concern about the potential loss of Pippbrook - which was built in the 1750s and has listed status - as a provision for people of the town.

Paul Finch, a committee member for development with the Pixham Residents Association, said: “I understand that times are changing but I don’t think anyone wants to see the house go.

“I think that Pippbrook House is exactly how a library should look.

“It’s difficult if it’s not providing the right environment, function or layout, but I have never been keen on St Martins Walk – it doesn’t do anything to encourage people to come into the town.

"Maybe having a library there will encourage people to go there. But it would be a concern if Pippbrook was not there for public use.”

Frank Pemberton, the local secretary of the Surrey Archaeology Society, added: “I am appalled by the threat that such a move out of Pippbrook House would bring to the building itself, its historic décor and central role in the social life of Dorking residents past, present and future.”

It is not just the current library at Pippbrook which is subject to consultation about its future use, but also the current offices of Mole Valley District Council, and Councillor Stephen Cooksey (Dorking South) questioned where else these facilities might be housed.

“There is little available land in Dorking for the provision of public services but a clear demand for new and replacement facilities,” the Liberal Democrat member said.

“It seems to many people that any proposal to move MVDC out of Pippbrook would be an inexplicable folly. Mole Valley needs a civic heart and Pippbrook provides that.

“This building may need improvement but turning it into a housing estate is not the answer.”

Other members at the district council see its offices as outdated, inflexible and energy inefficient, but Cllr Clare Curran, MVDC’s portfolio holder for planning, said the site was merely subject to consultation.

“Lots of sites were put forward by landowners and developers,” the Bookham North Councillor said.

“Pippbrook was put forward as having potential and nothing more than that.”

Cllr Curran said the idea that the administration would make decisions about such sites in “smoke-filled backrooms” was wrong.

“That is not going to happen,” she added. “We are going to have an open and full debate about sites not just in Dorking, but across the whole of our district.”
http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/local-news/big-debate-over-future-library-4819195
www.getsurrey.co.uk
crawl=CC-MAIN-2017-43
154637
application/http; msgtype=response
sha1:FUF7HEOVDZG65BAQF3AO7C62LMU47O2W
<urn:uuid:bba178dc-088f-4709-a483-861230846e7a>
2017-10-17T05:06:00Z
104.96.220.98
text/html
sha1:AFWE2CXBW526IIZUAB2C3PQ5QOEPAX3F
<urn:uuid:27a8d14e-2806-47e6-973a-64f62d213376>
http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/local-news/big-debate-over-future-library-4819195
response
<urn:uuid:6e82b818-c491-4523-b674-86b0a9518adb>
robots: classic
hostname: ip-10-149-172-122.ec2.internal
software: Nutch 1.6 (CC)
isPartOf: CC-MAIN-2017-43
operator: Common Crawl Admin
description: Wide crawl of the web for October 2017
publisher: Common Crawl
format: WARC File Format 1.0
conformsTo: http://bibnum.bnf.fr/WARC/WARC_ISO_28500_version1_latestdraft.pdf