Residents say plans to replace Hersham Green Shopping Centre with a six-storey building containing mostly senior living accommodation will ‘ruin’ the area (Picture: SWNS)
Residents in a leafy Surrey village have been left ‘furious’ at plans to redevelop their local shopping centre and car park.
They say plans to replace Hersham Green Shopping Centre with a six-storey building containing mostly senior living accommodation will ‘ruin’ the area.
Angry locals fear the reduction in parking spaces will cause ‘havoc’ and worry the influx of lorries and connected construction work could be ‘dangerous’ for school children.
Trisha Miller, 68, said: ‘It’s going to cause total upheaval. We’re going to lose all of these shops, including the Waitrose. Where am I going to get a pint of Cravendale?’
Developers Quadrant Repurpose said the £6 million project would ‘future-proof’ Hersham Shopping Centre, adding the ‘investment in the retail units is only viable through the delivery of the residential side’.
Residents were given until September 4 to submit responses to the redevelopment. More than 2,000 letters of objection were submitted.
Phillip Smith, 61, said he is ‘furious’ at the prospect of the development.
The local, who has lived in Hersham all his life, said: ‘I live in the flats opposite where the development will be and I’m furious.
‘Those flats are going to be high – people will be looking straight into my home. I’ll have no privacy. It’s going to cause havoc. There will be loads of traffic. It will be chaos with all the lorries.
‘And what are the elderly people going to do? A lot of them rely on the proximity of these shops. Some are disabled. They need to be able to walk here or park here. They can’t be going anywhere else.
‘It’s going to muck everything up.’
Carol Kawoh at Hersham Green Shopping Centre (Picture: Tony Kershaw/SWNS)
Plans to redevelop a north Surrey shopping centre and car park site have received more than 2,000 letters of objection (Picture: Tony Kershaw/SWNS)
Carol Kawoh, 72, had similar concerns about the development’s impact on older generations.
She said: ‘I really feel for the people who live around here and come to this centre as a way to be a part of the community.
‘It gives people something to get up for in the mornings. Lots of people can only do the short walk here from their flats – or they need the disabled parking spaces here.
‘They can’t get a bus anywhere. So I feel for them.’
She said the development will affect her personally too – as the dry cleaners she works in will be forced to close: ‘I’m going to lose my job. I’ll be forced to retire. And I don’t want to stop working.
‘I’ve worked here for a decade and I love it. I just don’t know what I’ll do. I’ve really tried to campaign. I’ve encouraged people to sign the petitions and I’ve written my own personal letter of protest. It’s just awful.’
General views of Hersham Green Shopping Centre (Picture: Tony Kershaw/SWNS)
Marge Barley, 63, who work at a …read more
Source:: Metro
