Though not anywhere as dramatic or as important as Rishi Sunak’s, I can reveal that Surrey County Council has just made its own U-turn.  The council has written to the Farnham Cycling Campaign saying that they will, after all, provide us with copies of the draft Local Cycling and Walking Infrastructure Plan (LCWIP).  We will finally get to see it on 15 November this year.

This is great news as obviously it will provide an opportunity for us to let our local councillors know what we think of it before December’s Farnham Infrastructure Board meeting, to which the town centre traffic plans will be submitted for agreement.  We believe you really can’t make a decision about the one plan without considering the other, cycling and walking plan.

Getting to this point has been anything but easy.  Up to now the Council has refused point blank to give us any information about the LCWIP and, even when I submitted a Freedom of Information request, they refused it.  They denied that it was relevant and said that we will be consulted at an unspecified date next year on the designs for cycle infrastructure once the routes were already prioritised and agreed (without us). It took us an amazing amount of lobbying to get to this point.

So, it was surprising, to say the least, to read the leader of Surrey County Council, Tim Oliver’s column in this week’s edition of the Farnham Herald, in which he unapologetically said: “Local interest groups, such as the Farnham Cycling Campaign, have ben very involved in the development of the [LCWIP], and we value their ongoing contribution.”

However, I guess now is not the time to be churlish. There are elections in May so politics will be played.

We look forward to seeing the LCWIP and I know that I and the other supporters of the Cycling Campaign will engage positively. We will see what we can do to widen involvement. This is, after all, the most important opportunity we will have for some time to improve facilities locally.