Farnham Town Council’s joint-leader David Beaman has said a new road connecting Castle Hill and West Street would allow for the bottom part of Castle Street to be “totally pedestrianised”.

The proposed ‘Hart Link Road’ would link Castle Hill with the Upper Hart car park and on to West Street, at an estimated cost of £10.3 million.

Surrey County Council’s Farnham Infrastructure Programme team has so far been reluctant to include the proposal in its planned improvements for the town centre.

But in a column for the Herald (printed in full in this week's paper), Cllr Beaman reiterated his personal view that the construction of the Hart Link Road would “significantly reduce the amount of traffic that currently has no other option but to travel through central Farnham”.

He added it would allow the bottom half of Castle Street to be “totally pedestrianised” and “remove any need for a potentially hazardous right hand turn to be introduced from Castle Street into The Borough as currently envisaged”.

Cllr Beaman also believes that the Farnham Residents group taking control of Farnham Town Council (FTC) in 2019 and becoming a senior coalition partner at Waverley Borough Council helped "focus the minds" of colleagues at the county council.

He said: "If it had not been for the emergence of Farnham Residents in 2019 do you really believe that Surrey County Council would be paying as much attention to this remote outpost of the county as it is currently doing?"

Responding to comments by his predecessor as town council leader, Cllr John Neale, that Farnham risks missing out on pedestrianisation, Cllr Beaman said the Farnham Residents group is a "broad church" that encourages "open debate ", but added Cllr Neale was at the "extreme" end of this debate and "living in a different dimension".

"Needless to say there are varying viewpoints in the group about how the Farnham Infrastructure Programme (FIP) should be implemented," he continued. "At one extreme is Cllr John Neale who is the only member of the town council to believe that large scale pedestrianisation is the only way forward.

"He appears to wish, in direct opposition to the agreed policy of FTC, to impose the pedestrianisation of Farnham town centre come 'hell or high water' without adequate provision made in north and south Farnham to mitigate the effects of displaced traffic and their associated air pollution.

"Cllr Neale, in all his articles in the Herald, appears to believe that if Farnham town centre was fully pedestrianised without any other measures being taken, people will find other ways of travelling. If only this was true!

"This is quite frankly a rather utopian flight of fancy rather than a common sense approach."

Cllr Beaman added "some form of pedestrianisation is an end objective that I and many others would like to see achieved eventually" and said the current town centre proposals, while falling short of pedestrianisation, "do represent a significant step forward towards the day when Farnham town centre could be pedestrianised".

To this end, he reiterated the town council's unanimous view that a new link road should be constructed, linking Castle Hill to Upper Hart car park and beyond to West Street – a proposal Surrey County Council has previously talked down as too expensive, and with potential health and safety implications.

Cllr Beaman said: "This would involve construction of a small stretch (less than 1km) of new road to link Castle Hill with the Upper Hart car park and West Street at an estimated cost of £10.3 million which represents less than 0.6 per cent of SCC’s total Capital Budget.

"The benefits of constructing the Hart Link Road far outweigh the disbenefits and would significantly reduce the amount of traffic that currently has no other option even under present FIP proposals but to travel through central Farnham.

"It would allow the bottom half of Castle Street to be totally pedestrianised and remove any need for a potentially hazardous right hand turn to be introduced from Castle Street into The Borough as currently envisaged in the present proposals."