Hundred of villagers show support for saving Surrey bowls club from development

Over 500 hundred people have shown their support for saving Elm Grove in a paper petition.

The Walton-on-Thames Bowls’ Club has been running for more than a century but now the social and sporting centre is under threat from a potential development.

Elmbridge Borough Council is in talks with the local NHS team about selling part of Elm Grove’s recreational land to make way for a new health hub, replacing Walton-on-Thames Community Hospital.

The council has said it is a “once in a generation” chance to bring state-of-the-art health facilities to Walton-on-Thames.

But campaigners are fighting the plans to flatten the bowls club, claiming the NHS could rebuild Walton Community Hospital instead of erasing years of history and the tight-knit community around the club.

Launched two weeks ago, the petition was started in the hope of persuading North West Surrey NHS bosses to drop their plans.

It states: “We oppose the plan to sell the Walton Hospital for Housing and the Bowling Club for an NHS Hub.

“We believe that the Hub should be built by extending the hospital.”

Cllr Gregor Macgregor, also a campaigner, said: “Almost 80 per cent of the people asked to sign have signed.

“People really want to keep our hospital and not lose our bowls club.

“This really contradicts the views of Elmbridge Council, who will sell the Elm Grove site to the NHS.

“Their consultation was unrepresentative of the community as a whole.

“People want the NHS Hub, and the benefits it will bring, but they want it built on the hospital site.

“The consultation showed residents were wholly opposed to this crazy plan, but it was ignored by the Council.

“The cabinet went along with offering the land to the NHS, if they can get planning permission for their three-story building with tarmac all around it.

“This was done in spite of only 20 of the 48 Councillors supporting the plan, when given a chance to vote on it.”

Members of the Elmbridge Borough Council cabinet have robustly defended potentially selling the site to the NHS, saying to not do so would be a ‘dereliction of duty’.

If the Elm Grove sale does not go ahead the potential NHS investment will not go anywhere else in the borough.

The potential hub will include seven additional services ranging from mental health support, complex wound care, and maternity services.

Cllr Macgregor said residents can find the petition at the Elm Grove Bowls Club in Walton.