Dear friends, welcome to our latest Update covering material since our last one on 27 March. This is a short one as we have been "hitting the campaign trail" in preparation for the Surrey County Council elections on 6 May. We are posting regular updates on this on our Facebook site here.

If you are nervous about voting in person it is easy to get a postal vote using this form. Latest day for postal vote applications is Tuesday 20th April at 5pm in the Town Hall postbox outside the front door. You can also vote by Proxy if you are not going to be around. Contact us for a form. The deadline is 27th April.

Local Liberal Democrat Police and Crime Commissioner candidate Paul Kennedy is calling for a return to proper community policing, as half of all people say they never see police patrols in their local area.

New analysis by the Liberal Democrats reveals that 32229 crimes reported to Surrey Police last year were closed without a suspect being identified - including 4419 burglaries, 1162 car thefts and 183 robberies.

Following publication of the list of candidates for this year's Surrey County Council elections, it has emerged that 25 out of 56 Conservative county councillors are stepping down - a dropout rate of 45%.

The decision of so many Tory county councillors to leave office comes less than a year after the County Council was heavily criticised for wasting £250,000 on a failed bid to become a unitary authority by abolishing Surrey's borough and district councils. The County Council is widely regarded as an out-of-touch authority, which cannot get the basic services like repairing local roads and pavements right.

David has set up a petition on SCC's site here https://petitions.surreycc.gov.uk/CollegeCrossing/#detail

to seek improvements at this crossing. The lack of a pedestrian phase for the lights, and no dropped kerb, make it a difficult crossing for those who want to walk up to the Downs and can't sprint across.

Paul Kennedy, Liberal Democrat candidate for Surrey Police and Crime Commissioner, has taken the National Farmers Union pledge to make it a priority of Surrey Police to tackle rural crime and increase police visibility in rural areas.

Paul said: "I have no hesitation in backing the NFU campaign. Rural communities and Liberal Democrat councillors across Surrey, especially in my own beautiful constituency of Mole Valley, have long campaigned for more visible policing.

The Lib Dem Group have called for a review into Surrey County Council's failed attempt to build an 'Eco Park' to process much of Surrey's household waste after it was revealed that the Council is in legal proceedings with the builder of the facility.

At the Full Council meeting in March, the Cabinet Member for Environment and Climate Change announced that after "exhausting other options available, we have now entered legal proceedings with Suez to resolve our issues. We hope to bring this to a swift conclusion to allow us to move forward with the Eco park and resolve the matter."

Cllr Paul Kennedy, Liberal Democrat PCC for Surrey welcomed the comments in the Guardian of Martin Hewitt, the Chair of the National Police Chiefs' Council (NPCC) in recognising that the police's legitimacy is so low in black communities it is damaging the effectiveness of law enforcement.

Paul Kennedy said the start of solving any problem was to recognise what it was: