Local residents are invited to attend the Sunbury and Spelthorne Leisure Centre Customer Forum at 6.30pm on Tuesday 28 October at Spelthorne Leisure Centre, Knowle Green, Staines-upon-Thames, TW18 1AJ.

The Customer Forum is being organised by Spelthorne Council in partnership with Everyone Active and will provide the opportunity to meet the Centre Managers and Cllr Joanne Sexton, Spelthorne Council’s Cabinet Member for Communications.

You will hear about Everyone Active’s ongoing and planned activities for the Leisure Centres and also be invited to give your views on the current services and suggest improvements.

If you are interested in attending please contact Leisure Services on 01784 446433 or send an email to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Two meetings in relation to flooding have been scheduled by the Environment Agency for Spelthorne residents. It should be noted that these are not Spelthorne Council events, nor are these meetings open to the public at large. They are being held for residents who have been contacted directly by the Environment Agency regarding the installation of PLP (Property Level Protection) measures for their dwellings.

The meetings in Spelthorne are listed for the 10th October and 14th November and will give residents an opportunity to talk to the surveyors and ask any questions they may have about their property report recommendations. The installers will also be there so that residents can see the available products and, if desired, make appointments for them to complete the installation surveys. EA representatives will be present to facilitate legal agreements and to answer questions. For details, click here

Residents who may have queries regarding the River Thames Scheme should contact the Environment Agency by emailing This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or by writing to RTS team, Kings Meadow House, Kings Meadow Road, Reading, RG1 8DQ.

Sunbury Cricket Club welcomes THE MICKY MOODY BAND, led by one of the UK’s very best rock and blues guitarists, playing what Micky describes as “the music that he and the band all share a love for - rocking blues with a twist of swampy, sultry soul.” Micky’s career goes back the best part of fifty years (he is at pains to point out that he was very young when he started!) and he came to prominence in the ‘70s with the top bands Juicy Lucy and Snafu, before making his major impact when he joined Whitesnake, led by ex-Deep Purple singer David Coverdale. He stayed with Whitesnake throughout their career till they broke up in the ‘80s, and had huge worldwide success, co-writing their biggest hit “Fool For Your Loving”.

He has also played with Chris Farlowe, Roger Chapman & The Shortlist, Moody Marsden Band, Company Of Snakes and M3, and is currently a member of both Snakecharmer and The Bad Apples. Over the years, he has played on innumerable sessions with well-known acts, and is also a published author! SCC are fortunate indeed to have an artist of Micky’s stature and musical heritage playing at the Club.

New arrangements have been made by Spelthorne Council for collecting bulky items such as furniture, sofas, mattresses, TVs, fridges, freezers and cookers from your home.

By partnering with the RSPCA and Surrey Reuse Network, the Council is making sure items can be used by someone else or recycled into something else, rather than just sent to landfill.

Furniture and other items that are suitable for resale can be donated to the RSPCA. They will arrange for a free collection to be made from the ground floor of your property. This option is perfect for those items which are surplus to your requirements but too good to throw out. Choosing the RSPCA will mean your items are found a new home and vital funds will be raised for the charity.

The Surrey Reuse Network will collect all household items that can be reused or recycled from any floor of your property, including white goods. Items no longer in working order can also be collected as these can either be repaired or broken down and their components recycled. The cost for the collection is £44 for up to five items.

The Surrey Reuse Network, a group of charity enterprises, last year provided over 500 tonnes of affordable, quality furniture to Surrey households - that’s 500 tonnes of bulky goods which would otherwise have been buried in the ground.

If your items are not suitable for reuse or recycling (e.g. sacks of general waste), Spelthorne Council can arrange to collect and dispose of them for you. The cost for this service is £45 for up to three items which should be left in your front garden or by your front door.

To arrange your collection contact:

• RSPCA: Call 01784 423882 or 0843 8163828.
• Surrey Reuse Network: Call 0800 082 018, email at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. or visit www.surreyreusenetwork.org.uk
• Spelthorne Council: Call 01784 451499, email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or visit www.spelthorne.gov.uk/bulky

Alternatively you can dispose of your bulky items yourself at your local Community Recycling Centre at Charlton Lane, Shepperton, TW17 8QA.

The Sunbury & Shepperton Arts Association is delighted to announce events at the Riverside Arts Centre this Autumn.

COFFEE CONCERTS

We are pleased to present two coffee concerts this Autumn:

Saturday 11 October

Piano Recital with Anna Le Hair

Anna performs works by Beethoven (Six Bagatelles), Chopin (Three Waltzes), Grieg (Four Lyric Pieces), Faure, Rachmaninov, Tchaikovsky and Janacek. http://www.annalehair.co.uk/

Saturday 22 November

Lesley Shrigley Jones (cello) and Yekaterina Lebedeva (piano) present Cello Masterpieces from the 20th Century with works by Schnitkke and Poulenc.

Please join us for Coffee and Croissants at 10.15am. The Recitals begin at 11am and finish at midday.

For more information or to book tickets (£7.50) for these concerts, please call the BOX OFFICE on 01932 782 788. Download the flyer here

The Council's Arts and Young People Officer, Catherine Learmonth, is currently publicising a project being run in Sunbury called ‘The Spelthorne Community Garden’.

The garden is run by volunteers and Catherine is looking for more volunteers to get involved. It is based at Hawkedale Infants school.

The Spelthorne Community Garden is one of several currently being created across Surrey and is funded by Spelthorne Borough council and the Arts Partnership Surrey, a strategic alliance of 9 local authorities and trusts. It relies on a group of local volunteers to develop, care and maintain it, working alongside an artist from community art organisation Sculpt it.

The group is always looking for new volunteers, so if you enjoy gardening, arts and crafts, physical work or would simply like to make new friends then get in touch and see how you can get involved. The group meets weekly on a Saturday between 1 – 4pm at the garden based at Hawkedale Infants School, Stratton Road, Sunbury-on-Thames, TW16 6PG. To see flier, click here.

For more information please contact Spelthorne leisure service on:

Telephone: 01784 446 433

E-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Spirited representations from Brian Catt, Peter Francis, Peter Crews, Malcolm Robertson and Cllr. Tim Evans were not sufficient to persuade the Planning and Regulatory Committee at County Hall from giving final approval for the construction of an incinerator (aka the 'EcoPark') at the Charlton Lane Community Recycling Centre. The approval was passed with a 7 - 4 majority.

Possibly the most irritating aspect of this decision is that our speakers, including experts in their various fields of chemical engineering and physics, knew a great deal more than the combined membership of the Committee itself. Once again, a cast-iron case against the construction of this belching, polluting edifice was trumped by the politics. A truly depressing, if predictable outcome.

It now remains to be seen what legal avenues are available to us by way of legal challenge; and these are being actively explored as we go to print.

A public meeting on aircraft noise is open to all and will be held at the Pavilion in Ascot Racecourse on Monday, October 13th. Doors will open at 7.00pm for a 7.30pm start and it's expected to finish at approximately 9.00pm.

The meeting offers a chance for residents to question Heathrow officials about the trial of flight paths which have caused a massive increase in the noise pollution by low-flying aircraft. It is also an opportunity to raise questions on any number of issues eg.,failure to consult; the possibility of fuel dumping (not appropriate on departures); impact of noise on schools; impact on property values; and impact on those who had moved to the area to escape aircraft noise etc.

The event is being run by Heathrow, but representatives of National Air Traffic Services (NATS) and the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) will be present.

The following is an extract of an email received by LOSRA with a request that it be brought to the attention of residents:

We are Action Surrey, Surrey’s free, impartial energy advice service, funded through Surrey’s 12 local authorities. We are delighted to announce that we have recently been awarded £2.5million from the local department of energy and climate change (DECC), and are looking to provide this funding to local residents.

The project, Streets Ahead, is offering a grant of £3,500 to individual residents towards the cost of solid wall insulation. Currently, this is the only funding available to Surrey residents for solid wall insulation.

Please follow this link to the project website www.actionsurrey.org/streetsahead to download the brochure and find out more.

We would appreciate if you would kindly circulate this information amongst members of your organisation, and if there are any upcoming meetings being held, we would be delighted to attend to provide further information.

Kind regards,

Camilla Wollny - Administration Apprentice - Tel: 0333 014 3620

Thameswey Sustainable Communities Ltd

Apologies for the irresistible pun but readers will remember that we posted an online petition to reinstate the cows at Dairy Crest on the A316 road (see article of 18th July).

It seems that the petition, which attracted 8000 signatories, had the desired effect. The dairy in Feltham has been there since 1931 and has had cows on display in some form since that date. Originally the cows, fashioned out of concrete, were displayed in the gardens but were placed on the roof in 1977 on completion of an extension to the building.

We are pleased to report Dairy Crest has taken note of the petition and has agreed to reinstate the cows in the near future.