AMBITIOUS plans to overhaul Farnham’s “insane” road network led by MP Jeremy Hunt, Farnham Town Council and prominent town architects have been presented to the Farnham Society ahead of a wider public consultation.

In 2014, the MP for South West Surrey held a referendum on draft plans to part-pedestrianise the centre of Farnham to tackle the town’s chronic traffic congestion and air pollution problems, gaining the backing of 53 per cent of voters.

In the years that followed, Mr Hunt has been frustrated by a lack of progress on his plans - and in August last year he hit out at the “disgraceful” decision by a Surrey County Council committee to delay a promised consultation on the new road scheme.

Changing his approach, Mr Hunt is now calling on Farnham to grasp the nettle, telling members of the Farnham Society last Friday evening: “The truth is I don’t think anyone outside Farnham is going to solve this for us. If we want to do this, we’re going to have to come up with the initiatives ourselves.”

Taking inspiration from the successful “bottom-up” approach of Farnham’s community-led Neighbourhood Plan, Mr Hunt has enlisted the help of Farnham Town Council to lead the consultation - gaining the backing of its Tory leader Carole Cockburn and opposition Farnham Residents councillor Andy MacLeod, a former chairman of The Farnham Society planning committee.

Also on board is Jim Duffy, a Farnham-based architect with vast experience of leading town centre regeneration projects across Britain, Europe and North America.

Mr Duffy has already progressed draft proposals based on the group’s initial ideas, incorporating several unfulfilled projects previously explored by Surrey County Council, and believes his plans could correct the “chaos” of Farnham town centre’s “insane” road system, and help the town realise its potential as a “very coherent, very attractive destination-level English market town...a place that I don’t quite know why I’m going but I’m going anyway”.

In his presentation to the Farnham Society’s annual meeting, Mr Duffy outlined a multi-phase approach to bring these ideas to fruition:

• Phase ‘1a’ would require no “fundamental changes” to the town’s traffic system, he said, but would aim to “re-balance” the town centre space between pedestrians and traffic. This would be achieved by reducing the number of lanes throughout the town centre in favour of wider pavements, raised “table” crossing points and new traffic lights at the southern, western and northern approaches to The Borough.

• The next stage outlined by Mr Duffy, phase ‘1b’, proposes reversing the one-way system in The Borough between Castle Street and Downing Street to allow easier access from the north to the Hart car parks, and between Lower Downing Street and Union Road to allow two-way access to the Waggon Yard and Central car parks from the south and east. He hopes this would cut much of the traffic needlessly passing through the centre of town, trapped in the one-way system.

• Phase ‘1c’ scales up the proposals again, reinstating the historic road link between Castle Hill and the Hart - effectively re-routing the A287 away from Castle Street. This would require the purchase of 150 metres of private land, according to Mr Duffy, but would facilitate a new “world class” town square at the bottom of Castle Street, as well as enabling the whole of The Borough to become a “strong pedestrian-priority zone”.

• Phase two seeks to solve the “disaster” of Hickleys Corner and Station Hill, which Mr Duffy says will only get worse with the reinstatement of direct train services to Guildford. Instead, the town planner proposes giving the Firgrove Hill to A31 link “priority” at Hickleys Corner, re-routing Approach Road to undercut The Mulberry pub and open directly onto the A31 traffic lights instead of Station Hill.

• Finally, in phase three Mr Duffy incorporates a Wrecclesham bypass into his plans, redirecting heavy traffic away from the village centre and reducing the risk of repeated railway bridge strikes on the A325.

“The town needs to play to its strengths and become the town it wants to be,” he said in conclusion. “We want to do this. We want to get on with it, so let’s do it. There is a will to do it, there is a leadership to do it, there is potential funding. It could be done if we all got behind it.”

Mr Hunt also talked up the prospect of funding at the meeting but warned against further delays. He said: “We’ve got two big developments going ahead in the town centre, Brightwells and The Woolmead, and on a practical level getting some money for this will be a lot easier if we can persuade developers who are already investing a lot in new developments to chip in.”

Discussing the next steps, the MP continued: “We are taking a risk because we haven’t raised the money to do this, so what we have to do is to find a scheme that broadly we all think would be a great way to go, and then I will make it my principal job to go and bang on doors to try and raise the money.

“But the thing that will make it easier to gain the financing for these schemes is if we can say we’ve been through an open consultation, we’ve listened to everyone’s ideas and we’re able to say this really does have the support and the enthusiasm of the people of Farnham.”