Background to the Guildford Vision Group

Background to the Guildford Vision Group

In January The Guildford Society responded to the Guildford Borough Council’s Draft Town Centre Masterplan by convening a meeting (attended by c.90 people) and commissioning Allies & Morrison to help prepare a response to the consultation process.

It quickly became clear that much more could be achieved to resolve some of the major issues articulated at the meeting if a more thorough visioning and planning process were undertaken.

The Guildford Society submitted its response to Guildford Borough Council and at the same time, a group of local residents formed the Guildford Vision Group.

The Group comprises a range of individuals who have experience in different ways of property or planning issues.  Here is a list of who is on the Group steering committee.  Members of the Group bring no personal agenda or interest in the outcome of the campaign beyond the satisfaction of seeing Guildford on a path towards a much better future.  To emphasis the point, the Group will only oppose any specific development if it feels it is limiting the possibilities of the town ahead of completion of the vision.  Equally it will only pup forward new development ideas or potential solutions if it feels it necessary to illustrate what could be achieved.

The Group formally launched its campaign at a public launch meeting on 21 March 2012.  More details of the presentations and outcomes from the meeting can be found here

Our Goal

The goal of the Group and its campaign continues to be simply to help bring about the creation of an inspiring, long-term Vision for Guildford through a process of wide engagement with the community and the involvement of leading professional advisors.  In that spirit, we seek to engage with all relevant elected and other representative bodies who are committed to Guildford to ensure that they can play the most appropriate role in achieving this goal.

Our activities

We will keep this website as up to date as possible, to provide you with as much relevant information as we can. The site will also provide you with a forum to express your views and debate with others through our blog or via twitter (@GuildfordVision), Linked In (Guildford Vision Group) or facebook.

If you are a member of any organisation or community group that is interested in these ideas and would like us to come along and help put some flesh on the bones, we would be pleased if at all possible to get a member of the Vision Group along to briefly present our thinking and chair a discussion to get your inputs.

We will continue to lobby Guildford Borough Council and all other relevant bodies, not in favour of any particular solution, simply to get a process underway in which you can all have your say in much more depth in the debate about Guildford’s future.

And we would be delighted to hear of any other ways you may think of where we could further the cause – contact our campaign manager Yvonka Wilkinson at action@guildfordvisiongroup.com