Home-Start Spelthorne are looking for kind, caring volunteers with parenting experience who can offer a few hours a week to support a family. 

The volunteers will provide practical help with parenting as well as emotional support, friendship and a listening ear. 

The next Volunteer Preparation Course is starting in November so if you would like further information, please visit the Council's website at www.home-startspelthorne.org or call them on 01784 463200 or email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Further to the article posted on Monday (see below) the Council has published the following notice:

Spelthorne is pleased to confirm that 58 Afghan refugees, including 10 women and 38 children, arrived in the Borough to move into temporary accommodation, after the successful completion of their quarantine period. This accommodation is being funded by the Home Office, while Councils across the region assist them in providing a longer-term solution.

The Council is extremely grateful to residents across the Borough, partners including our foodbanks and Council staff for their generosity in asking how they can help and make donations to support these refugees. Our guests are being provided with appropriate catering and each of them has been provided with a welcome pack, which has been translated for them.

We are currently assessing what support each of them will need in terms of donations, such as clothing, which would need to be new or nearly new and clean, and we will look to provide details on how you can support them in the coming days.

We would also like to acknowledge and thank the charity Penny Appeal for generously assisting the Council by providing funds to assist with purchasing clothing, toys, educational items and travelcards.

Cllr Lawrence Nichols, Leader of the Council, said: "On behalf of Spelthorne residents, I want to extend a warm welcome to our guests. I am humbled by the offers of help we have had from Spelthorne residents and partners and I want to thank everyone who has got in touch. The Family Support team are working with these refugees and are establishing what support they need, and we will update you when we can on how best you can help."

The following press release from the Council has been emailed to the Association and we are pleased to reproduce it here:

Spelthorne is preparing to offer immediate assistance, with financial backing from the Government, to support Afghan refugees. The Council also stands ready to support the Government’s longer-term resettlement scheme to help those fleeing their country following the Taliban’s takeover.

Spelthorne Council officers had already prepared a report on the Afghan Relocation Scheme, which is designed for Afghani Locally Employed Staff (for example interpreters who assisted the UK armed forces, and their families), which will be presented to the Community Wellbeing & Housing Committee in September. The scheme is designed to resettle and integrate Afghan families, who have supported our Armed Forces for the past two decades, into local communities and will involve the Government fully financing any resources we commit to support and we are considering how best to help.

However, following events this week we have had emergency meetings with the Home Office with a view to offering immediate support for families who have been forced to leave their country, pending longer term accommodation being found in the UK. The Government announced on 18^th August a new resettlement scheme to help 20,000 Afghan nationals take refuge in the UK over a five-year period. The Government scheme will see 5,000 Afghani nationals who are at risk due to the current crisis, resettled in its first year with priority given to women and girls, and religious and other minorities. More details about the Government’s scheme can be found here: www.gov.uk/government/news/bespoke-resettlement-route-for-afghan-refugees-announced

Cllr Lawrence Nichols, Leader of the Council, said: “We are witnessing a humanitarian catastrophe unfolding before our eyes in Afghanistan, and we have a moral obligation to help. The lives of these people are threatened, and they are in dire need of urgent assistance. Spelthorne Council is committed to doing our fair share to help. This country owes a great debt to those who worked with and supported our troops over the last two decades, so it is only right that we help them.”

The Council, recent recipients of the Gold Award in the Defence Employer Recognition Scheme, also acknowledges that there will be veterans who served in Afghanistan living in the Borough, who may be affected by the Taliban’s takeover. We have a veterans’ hub in the Borough, which allows the Armed Forces Community to connect. Details of which can be found here: www.spelthorne.gov.uk/article/20281/Veterans-Hub-opens-in-Spelthorne

Veterans who need specialist support are encouraged to reach out to the services available to them. Options can be found on the following websites:

• www.army.mod.uk/people/join-well/managing-stress/ask-for-help/
• www.nhs.uk/nhs-services/armed-forces-and-veterans-healthcare/veterans-nhs-mental-health-services/
• Combat Stress – 0800 138 1619 (Veterans and families), 0800 323 4444 (Serving personnel and families)
• www.spelthorne.gov.uk/afc

Cllr Robin Sider, the Council’s Armed Forces Champion, said: “As a former member of the Armed Forces, I can fully empathise with what many will be feeling at witnessing these tragic scenes in Afghanistan. I want to assure veterans that you are not alone and support is available to you via the Armed Forces Network and the NHS.”

Meeting, plus the Regatta and Christmas Fair, not happening, our paid-up membership has dropped significantly.

Regrettably the Leo Richardson concert scheduled for 3rd August has been cancelled due to circumstances beyond the control of the organisers.

However, the exciting news is that the organisers of the famous Brecon Jazz Festival have asked Mood Indigo Events to collaborate with them this year.

Instead of being put on 'live' in Brecon over one weekend, it is to be spread out throughout August in Brecon and other various locations (including the Riverside Arts Centre).

Three excellent bands will be performing at the Centre from 2pm and the live-stream will be watched by an international audience.

In-the-venue concert tickets are being sold through the MoodIndigo website at  https://www.moodindigoevents.co.uk, while the livestream tickets are being managed from Brecon - full details of which may also be found on the website.

To see poster, click here

The Leo Richardson gig at the Riverside Arts Centre which was scheduled for the same night as the European Cup Final (Scroll down to 23rd June) was postponed (unsurprisingly) through lack of support.

It will now take place on Tuesday 3rd August.

An invitation to Sunbury and Halliford businesses to register for a lunch with Business Secretary and MP for Spelthorne, Rt Hon. Kwasi Kwarteng and at which the Deputy Chief Executive for Surrey CC will also be present on 30th July has been forwarded to LOSRA by Buddhi Weerasinghe, our recently elected county councillor.

The following notice has been received from the Senior Planning Officer at Spelthorne Council. Needless to say, support for the cycle/footbridge from Sunbury to Walton would fall within the remit of this consultation, so please take this additional opportunity to make your views known.

"We are writing to resident associations in Spelthorne to introduce some new work that is underway to plan where streets in Spelthorne could be improved to make it safe and comfortable for everyone to walk and cycle, and more inviting places to be when spending time outside.

"Spelthorne Borough Council and Surrey County Council are working with Atkins, a specialist firm, to develop a Local Cycling & Walking Infrastructure Plan (GOV.UK pdf) for our borough.

"It is vitally important that improvements reflect the needs of our community, so we would like to work with resident associations and other community groups whilst developing this plan.

"At this stage, we would like to invite residents and resident associations to submit suggestions on where walking and cycling can be improved in your neighbourhood through our dedicated website:

Discover Surrey LCWIP to Have Your Say – Commonplace

"We have received a number of suggestions already, and have previously received a large volume of suggestions when we trialled this online feedback map last year. To those who have already submitted suggestions – thank you! All of these comments are currently being reviewed. The map remains open for new comments and will be reviewed by those working on the project as the plan progresses.

"Suggestions will be used to help identify areas in the borough where investment could most usefully be directed. Later in the process, having identified these areas, we will invite the residents associations for these areas to more detailed discussions on improvements that could be made in their area."

Kind regards

Hannah Bridges MRTPI

Senior Planning Officer (Strategic Planning)

There will be an extra live jazz event at Riverside Arts Centre on Tuesday 13th July.

It’s one of Terry Collie's ‘My Life in Music’ series but for the first time Mood Indigo Events are opening it up to a live audience as well as putting it out on Livestream.

The audience in the room will be invited to ask questions at the end of the talk part on the night which will be followed by a duo concert.

The guest will be guitarist Jim Mullen who has played at the RAC with the Terence Collie Trio in the past. As one of the most soulful and subtly virtuosic players this country has ever produced, Jim Mullen has recorded and toured with the very best, also carving his own place in jazz-funk history as a founding member of the Morrissey-Mullen Band.

For further details, click here

It was just over a year ago that the exhibition of the Lendy Memorial in the Walled Garden was made the subject of a controversy by an unsolicited commentariat questioning the rectitude of its continued public display. (See previous articles of 17th June, 22nd June,17th August 2020 and 19th January 2021).

At the conclusion of discussions with the Council and all interested parties, it was finally, and with universal approval, agreed that the Memorial should remain where it is. Our past Chairman, Alan Doyle, kindly undertook to write about the history of the Lendy brothers and to make his work freely available at the Embroidery Gallery. The resulting booklet is co-authored by Nick Pollard, the historian who many will know as the Chairman of Sunbury and Shepperton Local History Society.

To read the booklet online, click here