Before the stadium tours, private jets and worldwide fame, five young rhythm-and-blues musicians performed on a temporary floor laid over the swimming pool at Epsom Baths Hall. More than six decades later, as the Rolling Stones celebrate another chart-topping album, local history reveals that the band visited Epsom not once, but twice.

The Rolling Stones have returned to the top of the British album chart with Foreign Tongues, released on 10 July. It is the band’s 25th studio album and their 15th to reach number one in the UK—putting them level with the Beatles and one behind record-holder Robbie Williams.

That remarkable longevity offers an opportunity to look back to two winter Saturday nights in Epsom, when Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Brian Jones, Bill Wyman and Charlie Watts were still climbing towards stardom.

A swimming pool became a concert hall

Epsom Municipal Baths opened in East Street on 15 March 1939. The £65,000 complex had been designed from the outset to serve two very different purposes: swimming during the warmer months and public entertainment during the winter.

Its main pool was 100 feet long and 35 feet wide, with galleries seating 412 people. For dances, concerts, boxing and theatrical performances, a moveable maple floor supported by tubular scaffolding was erected over the water. A stage, lighting system, microphone and record turntable completed the transformation. The converted hall was licensed to accommodate as many as 1,396 people for music, dancing and public meetings.

It must have produced an unusual atmosphere: a rock-and-roll audience gathered on boards above the drained or concealed pool, surrounded by tiled walls, diving boards and the acoustics of a municipal swimming bath.

After the Second World War, the Baths Hall became one of Epsom’s principal social venues, hosting dances, boxing, orchestral performances and visiting entertainers. The Epsom and Ewell History Explorer describes the Rolling Stones’ 1963 engagement as a sold-out highlight for which the band received a fee of £60.

Saturday 14 December 1963

The best-documented Stones appearance took place on Saturday 14 December 1963.

“Star Rhythm Blues Time with the Rolling Stones”

The publicity picked out the band’s two records, Come On and I Wanna Be Your Man, and advertised an appearance by supporting group The Presidents, described as “that ever popular attraction”. Dancing and music were scheduled from 8pm until 11.30pm. Tickets cost five shillings and sixpence in advance or six shillings and sixpence at the door, with reduced rates offered for parties.

The instruction to “get your tickets early and avoid disappointment” proved well judged if the History Explorer’s record of a sell-out is correct.

A surviving business trail also corroborates the engagement. Christie’s has catalogued an Eric Easton Ltd performance contract for the Rolling Stones at Epsom Baths Hall among a collection of early Stones agreements covering venues in and around London during late 1963. Eric Easton was then managing the group with Andrew Loog Oldham.

The Epsom booking came at a fascinating point in the band’s ascent. They were no longer an unknown club act, but neither had they become the international institution familiar today.

On the chart dated 11 December 1963, three days before the concert, I Wanna Be Your Man stood at number 16. It moved to number 15 the following week and eventually reached number 12. Their self-titled debut album had not yet appeared; it would enter the albums chart in April 1964 and spend 12 weeks at number one.

Thus, Epsom caught the Stones in the narrow interval between their first taste of chart success and their transformation into one of Britain’s biggest bands.

Back again four weeks later

Concert chronologies reveal something overlooked in the familiar local account: the Rolling Stones returned to Epsom Baths only four weeks later, on Saturday 11 January 1964.

The second appearance is listed in detailed Stones performance records as an “extracurricular gig”—a separate engagement fitted around the band’s first major tour of 1964. Their schedule at the time was punishing. They performed two shows at Walthamstow’s Granada Theatre on 10 January, played Epsom the following evening, and then gave two more shows at the Granada in Tooting on 12 January.

They were recording at the same relentless pace. On 10 January—the day before returning to Epsom—the band worked at Regent Sound Studios on Honest I Do, I’m a King Bee and an early version of Not Fade Away, before travelling to Walthamstow for the evening performances.

Their chart fortunes were still improving. I Wanna Be Your Man was at number 15 during the week of the second Epsom appearance and rose to its number 12 peak on the chart dated 15 January.

Contemporary touring accounts estimate that the Stones travelled more than 5,000 miles during this period, playing clubs, colleges, ballrooms, cinemas and halls across Britain. The Epsom concert was one of several additional ballroom engagements squeezed between the formal package-tour performances.

No dependable set list has yet emerged for either Epsom show. The December poster establishes that Come On and I Wanna Be Your Man were central to the promotion, while the band’s contemporary touring repertoire included blues, rhythm-and-blues and Chuck Berry numbers. It would, however, be unsafe to present any reconstructed list as the exact programme heard at Epsom.

Before the world knew their names

The contrast with the present could hardly be greater.

In December 1963, the Stones were travelling from town to town, earning comparatively modest appearance fees and promoting two singles. Their audience in Epsom paid a few shillings to see them in a converted public swimming bath.

Within months, their first album would displace the Beatles’ With the Beatles at the top of the UK chart. Their first British number-one single, It’s All Over Now, followed in the summer of 1964. The tours, television appearances and scenes of mass excitement then spread far beyond Britain.

Yet the five musicians who appeared in Epsom were already the classic early Stones: Jagger at the microphone, Richards and Jones on guitars, Wyman on bass and Watts behind the drums. Brian Jones and Charlie Watts are no longer alive, while Mick Jagger and Keith Richards—then barely out of their teens—remain at the centre of a band topping the album chart in 2026.

The hall has gone, but the night remains

Epsom Baths Hall continued to host entertainment after the Stones, including a performance by Genesis in 1972. Its popularity eventually declined as alternative venues opened and leisure habits changed. The hall closed in 1989; the original baths complex was demolished in 2001 and replaced by the present Rainbow Leisure Centre.

Nothing visible at the modern centre readily tells visitors that one of the most famous bands in the world once performed there—twice—on a wooden floor constructed above the municipal pool.

What is still missing are the human memories: who queued at the Baths Hall box office, who danced at the front, what the band sounded like through the hall’s public-address system, and whether anyone kept a ticket, photograph or autograph.

Epsom and Ewell Times would be delighted to hear from readers who attended either concert—or whose parents, relatives or friends remembered the Rolling Stones’ two visits to Epsom Baths.

Epsom and Ewell History Explorer is the definitive guide to all things historical and more. Run by dedicated volunteers.

Epsom Playhouse remains one of the regions premier venues for tribute bands including rock-and-roll.

Epsom Jazz Club

brings live top-flight jazz bands to the centre of Epsom. Next season starting 24th September.

Lionel Blackman

Dear Editor,

Very disappointed with Epsom and Ewell Council, this would have been a simple arrangement. I myself stayed in the borough of Bucha only a few weeks ago on my way to Odesa. I was only a few miles from the area occupied by the Russians, they were only stopped by the Ukrainians destroying the bridge. Imagine living in Epsom and enemy forces occupying Ewell killing people in the streets. Shame on the council members voting against this.

Yours faithfully,

Richard Gough

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Dear Editor,

As a Ukrainian, I want to sincerely thank the people of Epsom and Ewell for everything they have done to support Ukraine over the past more than four years. Your kindness, generosity and the incredible humanitarian support you have provided have meant more than words can express.

Humanitarian aid has saved lives. But today, a statement of friendship and solidarity matters too. It tells Ukrainians that we have not been forgotten and that we are not standing alone.

The war has not become easier. Every day people continue to die, and cities continue to be attacked. We all hope this war ends in Ukraine, because if Russian aggression is not stopped here, its consequences will not stop at Ukraine’s borders.

Thank you for speaking up, for raising these issues, and for continuing to stand with Ukraine. It means more to us than you may ever know.

Yours faithfully,

Natalia Pankratova

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Epsom and Ewell recorded Surrey’s second-highest rate of upheld Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman complaints during 2025/26 — although officers and some councillors argued that the numbers were too small to indicate a systemic problem.

The Ombudsman received 18 complaints concerning EEBC, up from 15 in the previous year. Two were recorded as upheld, producing a rate of 2.4 upheld complaints per 100,000 residents. Only Spelthorne, at 2.8, had a higher rate among Surrey’s borough and district councils.

At last night’s Audit and Scrutiny Committee meeting Cllr Alex Coley (Independent Ruxley) asked why Epsom and Ewell’s rate appeared markedly worse than most neighbouring authorities.

Cllr Steve McCormick (Conservative Woodcote and Langley) asked what weaknesses in the Council’s first and second-stage complaints processes were causing cases to reach the Ombudsman and what service improvements would be put in place before the transfer to East Surrey Unitary Authority.

Assistant Director Andrew Bircher rejected the suggestion of systemic failure. He said the actual number of complaints was very low and that one of the two cases was classified as upheld even though the Ombudsman had not opened a full investigation. In that case, the Council had already accepted the complaint and taken satisfactory remedial action.

“I don’t see that there is an issue to be concerned about here as we transition into the new East Surrey authority,” he said.

Cllr Robert Leach RA Nonsuch) agreed that percentages based on one or two cases could be misleading. “When you’re dealing with very small numbers, you really have to have a viability threshold,” he said. “This is probably something barely worth reporting.”

Refuse, rodents and reasonable adjustments

The first upheld case concerned repeated accumulations of refuse and fly-tipping near a resident’s home, causing a rodent problem.

Following the Council’s own stage-two investigation, it apologised and agreed to double waste collections and inspections, make the location a priority site and increase the presence of uniformed officers.

The Ombudsman decided that no further investigation was required because the Council had already remedied the injustice. Its system nevertheless recorded the complaint as upheld.

The second case concerned the Council’s requirement that reports of planning breaches be submitted online or on a specified form.

The Ombudsman found that, after the complainant explained difficulties using their hands, the Council should have asked whether a reasonable adjustment was required. Its failure to do so caused uncertainty, although the Ombudsman could not say that an adjustment would necessarily have been granted.

The Council subsequently contacted the complainant and reminded officers of their anticipatory duty under the Equality Act.

Eleven data breaches

The report also disclosed 11 data breaches since the committee’s February meeting.

Nine involved email. Two were reported to the Information Commissioner’s Office, which took no further action beyond providing general advice.

The Council had also been notified of two complaints to the ICO concerning its responses to Freedom of Information requests. At the time of the committee meeting, both were still awaiting allocation to an investigator.

Under the new data legislation, residents will generally be required to complain to the Council about its handling of personal information before taking the matter to the ICO.

Mr McCormick asked how the Council could guarantee that complaints about its own conduct would be investigated objectively and whether the financial and staffing implications had been calculated.

Mr Bircher said the Council’s Business Support Team would provide an independent review through its existing two-stage complaints procedure. He could not say how the workload would be measured or reported under the new unitary council. “I dare say that this annual complaints report won’t come to this committee next year because it won’t exist,” he said.

The committee noted the report.

Sam Jones – Reporter

Image: Alan Stanton Licence details

Epsom and Ewell Borough Council’s homelessness expenditure remains at its maximum risk rating despite additional staff, fraud investigations, government funding and the implementation of a homelessness action plan.

The Council’s year-end performance report recorded a £410,000 adverse budget variance for 2025/26, with net expenditure of £10.679 million against an approved budget of £10.269 million.

The overspend was driven primarily by temporary accommodation costs. It would have been higher without treasury income approximately £100,000 above forecast and around £200,000 of additional income from property leases completed later than anticipated.

Councillor Steve McCormick (Conservative Woodcote and Langley) told the Audit and Scrutiny Committee 16th July that those gains had effectively masked what would otherwise have been a £710,000 operational overspend.

The number of homelessness applications rose by 82.6% during the year to 623. The number of households in nightly-paid accommodation remained above target and was 5.5% higher than at the equivalent point a year earlier.

The corporate risk of homelessness spending exceeding its budget carries an inherent score of 16 and, unusually, remains at 16 even after the Council’s controls are taken into account.

Mr McCormick asked whether that meant the controls were ineffective or that external pressures had simply overwhelmed what the Council could do.

Assistant Director Andrew Bircher said: “Notwithstanding all these actions that we seem to be taking in order to try and reduce the amount of homelessness, we’re not seeing that come to pass. In fact, we’re seeing the number of nightly paid and the homelessness numbers increasing. If it was getting better, I think we would see our residual risk lower, but what we’re seeing is it’s not getting better; it’s getting worse.”

He distinguished between making prudent financial provision for the costs and successfully reducing the underlying demand. “The fact that we might be able to cope with that doesn’t mean that it isn’t still a risk,” he said.

Where will the missing £650,000 come from?

Cllr Alex Coley (Independent Ruxley) agreed that officers had undertaken a considerable amount of work. He said almost every action within the homelessness and rough-sleeping strategy was marked green or completed, with modular housing the main exception. Without that work, he estimated annual costs could already have reached around £2 million.

However, he questioned whether the budget figures matched the scale of the known pressure. “The allocation of funding to temporary accommodation was significantly short of the money we spent in the last year, which is £1.4 million,” he said. “I think we’ve only allocated something like half of that, so £750,000. There is a question, isn’t there: where’s the other £650,000 going to come from?

“People might reasonably ask: did we actually set a balanced budget back in February?”

Three modular homes nearly two years late

The Council’s modular-homes programme remains more than three months off track against an original completion date of July 2024.

Only one location, providing three homes, was found to be viable. Progress has since been delayed by a requested land tribunal hearing, and the performance report supplied no new completion date.

Mr McCormick questioned why the tribunal risk had not been anticipated and what alternative rapid-delivery housing schemes were being pursued. Officers were unable to answer at the meeting and said a response would be obtained from the relevant service.

Financial position “unsustainable” without reorganisation

The Annual Governance Statement contained a candid warning from the Head of Paid Service that, although EEBC remained relatively financially stable, its position would be unsustainable over the longer term without local government reorganisation.

Mr McCormick asked whether that meant the Council might otherwise have faced a Section 114 financial emergency.

Mr Bircher said EEBC was in a better position than many neighbouring authorities but had previously relied upon reserves to balance its budget. “Clearly, use of reserves year after year is not a sustainable position,” he said.

Without reorganisation, the Council would have needed to consider substantial transformation and change programmes. He said the efficiencies expected from creating the East Surrey Unitary Authority would perform some of the function that a separate savings programme would otherwise have been required to achieve.

Property problem arises for third time

Without disclosing details discussed at a separate exempt meeting, Cllr Coley also challenged the red-rated risk attached to the Council’s property portfolio.

He said a problem involving the Council’s investment company had now arisen for a third time and would cost more than six figures. Previous advice had said doing nothing was not an option, but the problem had nevertheless been allowed to recur. “I would like to know what the control is so it doesn’t happen a fourth time,” he said.

Mr Bircher agreed the risk register should be updated with new mitigation but declined to bring a separate report back to the committee.

Mr McCormick noted that the Council described its approach as “treat” while both the inherent and residual property risk remained at 12. He asked what active measures had been taken to prevent commercial tenants defaulting. That question was also taken away for a later response.

ICT and other services off target

The Council’s 2024/25 ICT roadmap, originally due for completion in March 2025, remains off track. Its IT service-interruption risk remains high, with ageing components and dependence on outside suppliers identified as continuing threats.

Although new firewalls had been installed and other network work was progressing, Mr McCormick asked why the cyber-security response-plan review had slipped to September 2026 and whether investment might become redundant when systems were combined under the new unitary council.

Other significantly off-target indicators included long-term sickness absence and the proportion of parking penalty appeals answered within ten working days, which had fallen from 100% to 63%.

Mr Bircher said parking staff were diverted at the financial year-end to time-critical work such as permit and garden-waste renewals. The Council had chosen not to fund temporary extra capacity, although its response times remained better than the statutory requirement.

“When someone is accountable, they do not”

Many detailed questions were left unanswered because the heads of the relevant services were not at the meeting.

Mr McCormick asked how councillors and the public could be assured that written answers would subsequently be provided and published. Mr Bircher said it would be disproportionate to require every head of service to attend in case a question arose and that Democratic Services had a good record of recording questions and obtaining later answers.

Cllr Coley contrasted the attendance with a Strategy and Resources meeting two days earlier, at which the Chief Executive, Section 151 Officer, Monitoring Officer and senior property officers were present.

“The public and members might get the impression that when somebody wants something, everyone shows up, and when someone’s accountable, they do not,” he said.

The committee noted the performance and risk report.

Sam Jones – Reporter

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Related reports:

Epsom’s homelessness crisis

What are the solutions to Epsom’s homeless crisis?

Council grapples with rising cost of homelessness

Micro-homes for a macro-problem?

Did a fair view prevail on Epsom’s modular homes for the homeless?

Epsom housing project in access gridlock

Pods off in bricks grant for Epsom homeless

Stoneleigh library flats for homeless

Do good intentions square with homeless savings?

Image: Geograph Britain and Ireland | Licence details Creator: Evelyn Simak licenced for reuse under cc-by-sa/2.0

Epsom and Ewell Borough Council’s Audit and Scrutiny Committee has formally concluded that the process used for the confidential £500K Rainbow Leisure Centre urgent decision did not follow the Council’s stated procedure and was not justified by the information presented to councillors.

The finding came at the end of a lengthy and at times heated debate on Thursday 16 July over Urgent Decision 158, which was signed off by Cllr Neil Dallen (RA Town) as chair of the Strategy and Resources Committee, in December 2025 without first obtaining the approval of his Committee.

Councillor Chris Ames (Labour Court) proposed that the committee record:

“The process followed for Urgent Decision 158 did not follow the correct stated procedure and was not justified according to the information put before this committee.”

The proposal was carried.

The committee separately backed a recommendation from Councillor Alex Coley (Independent Ruxley) that, where a matter of significance is known about in advance — such as proposed expenditure exceeding £50,000 or a change to the Council’s constitution — the first action should be to schedule a committee meeting.

As Audit and Scrutiny cannot itself alter the constitution, the proposal is expected to go to the Standards and Constitution Committee.

Months of warning or sudden urgency?

The Council’s report stated that a decision was needed by 17 December to progress negotiations with the new Rainbow Leisure Centre operator. The next scheduled Strategy and Resources Committee meeting was not until 27 January 2026.

Officers said that failure to resolve the matter could have caused the contract to collapse, leading to the loss of management fees, a need to retender, the Council having to maintain the centre without an operator and uncertainty for staff.

However, the Council’s constitutional test is not simply whether a decision is required before the next scheduled committee meeting. An urgent decision may be used only where delay would seriously prejudice the Council or public interest and it is not practicable to convene a quorate meeting in time.

Cllr Ames said the same problem could be seen in the explanations given for several other urgent decisions.

“The next scheduled meeting is irrelevant,” he said. “What matters is: could a quorate meeting of the relevant decision-making body be brought forward to take this decision?”

Assistant Director of Corporate Services Andrew Bircher acknowledged that some of the explanations in the annual report did not fully reflect the constitutional test.

“It would be better on this report had we been able to identify that,” he said, adding that future reports would set out the position more clearly.

Cllr Coley said the Rainbow difficulties had been apparent months before UD158 was signed and that there had been ample opportunity to arrange a special committee meeting.

He described what had happened instead as “sofa-style governance”, with discussions taking place among senior officers, lead councillors and the Residents’ Association group before opposition councillors were informed.

“The process here is a committee meeting should have been organised,” he said. “Instead, what happened was a lot of talking behind closed doors.”

He said RA councillors had been shown the issue in early December, approximately four weeks before opposition councillors were given access to it.

Cllr Ames said the timetable appeared to have been “artificially managed” to create urgency and avoid a committee decision.

Chair Cllr Steve Bridger (RA Stamford) repeatedly attempted to restrict discussion to the decision-making process rather than the underlying Rainbow dispute. He also said the officers needed to answer many of the questions were not present and asked members to submit further questions in writing.

Cllr Ames sought a commitment that the answers would be published, arguing that otherwise residents might conclude that the Council was trying to avoid explaining what had happened to public money.

Who decided the document was exempt?

A second dispute concerned who decided that UD158 and its contents should be withheld from the public.

The committee report stated that Chief Executive Jackie King, acting as the Council’s “proper officer”, had made the exemption decision after considering its commercial sensitivity.

Cllr Ames repeatedly asked whether there was any contemporaneous written record of that decision or of the required balancing of the public interest in secrecy against disclosure.

Mr Bircher said the Chief Executive had confirmed by email that she authorised the exempt treatment and that the matter had been discussed at meetings of the Strategic Leadership Team.

He acknowledged that there was no separate record in the leadership team’s meeting notes, but said the Chief Executive had agreed that future exemption decisions would be evidenced on the relevant committee report or urgent decision form.

The Council’s legal adviser, Deborah Davis, said the exemption decision did not necessarily have to be recorded in writing. Someone did, however, need to have made the decision after considering both the relevant legal exemption and the public-interest test. Recording the decision and naming the proper officer would be good practice, she said.

Cllr Coley told the committee that, at a group leaders’ meeting in early January, the Chief Executive had said she had been on leave and that Deputy Chief Executive Vicky Potts had prepared and signed the urgent decision.

He questioned when the Chief Executive had subsequently decided that the document should be exempt and whether an exemption could properly be applied retrospectively.

Mr Bircher responded that the Chief Executive had been aware of the circumstances through leadership team discussions and was satisfied that the matter should be treated as commercially sensitive.

Ms Davis advised that leaked information does not automatically cease to be exempt. The Council could continue to treat it as confidential until an authorised decision was made that disclosure was now in the public interest.

£500,000 Rainbow background

Epsom and Ewell Times has previously reported that the confidential urgent decision approved by Cllr Neil Dallen (RA Town) authorised access to Council reserves of up to £500,000 in connection with disputed dilapidations discovered during the change of leisure centre operator.

Former operator GLL has said it was unaware of any legal claim and handed the building back in the condition required by its agreement. The Council has acknowledged that it holds no record of routine landlord inspections over the operator’s lengthy tenure.

UD158 has therefore become central not only to the financial dispute but also to questions over how the Council monitored one of its largest public assets and why councillors and residents were given so little contemporaneous information.

A written public statement read at the start of Thursday’s meeting accused the Council of six months of “procedural silence” and urged the committee to demand answers over whether defects had been concealed, missed by consultants or allowed to develop through a failure of landlord oversight.

Despite the Audit and Scrutiny committee’s investigation and debate on the Urgent Decision on the Rainbow Leisure Centre the public are still in the dark about how the dilapidations estimate (if accurate) arose in the first place.

Wider transparency failures

The Rainbow discussion was not the meeting’s only dispute over withheld information.

At the beginning of proceedings, Cllr Ames challenged an exempt internal-audit appendix because the agenda did not state that the public-interest test had been applied.

Ms Davis agreed that such a statement should have appeared. Mr Bircher apologised for the omission, and the restricted appendix was withdrawn because neither the Chief Executive nor Monitoring Officer was present to confirm the exemption decision.

Cllr Ames noted that he had raised exactly the same problem four months earlier.

The committee later amended the Council’s Annual Governance Statement to recognise the “urgent need” to deliver a previous Full Council resolution establishing a process for publishing urgent decisions.

Cllr Coley said the Council had reduced its use of urgent decisions from 22 in the previous reporting year to six, but that uploading six decision forms should not present an insurmountable resource problem.

“We have agreed it is going to be delivered,” he said. “The decision is to do it, not to investigate it.”

Sam Jones – Reporter

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Related reports

The Man Who Signed It, Chaired It, and Wouldn’t Explain It: Six Months of Silence Over Rainbow’s £500,000 Bill

Epsom & Ewell Council blocks release of Rainbow Leisure Centre condition papers

Epsom Council Rainbow Centre secrecy row deepens over “pre-election silence” advice

No end to Epsom’s Rainbow Leisure Centre controversy

Dalton and Dallen double-down disclosure denial

Epsom and Ewell Council transparency row erupts as Council backs publication of urgent decisions

“It’s my meeting”: Cllr Dallen stops questions about his role in alleged Rainbow “cover-up”

Cllr Dallen accused of £1/2m Epsom and Ewell Council “cover-up”

Epsom’s Rainbow Leisure Centre Places new operators

Nearly £4.92 million of infrastructure and community-project funding has been approved by Epsom and Ewell Borough Council despite a resident’s detailed appeal for the decision—or at least funding for a new Hogsmill footbridge—to be deferred.

The Strategy and Resources Committee approved five strategic Community Infrastructure Levy projects and eight neighbourhood schemes by six votes to one abstention at its meeting on Tuesday 14th July.

CIL is money raised from property development and intended to provide infrastructure required to support growth. The Council had approximately £5.04 million of unallocated strategic CIL and £1.13 million of unallocated neighbourhood CIL available at the beginning of the process.

The projects funded

The strategic allocations were:

£1 million for the Local Cycling and Walking Infrastructure Plan, conditional upon at least £1 million in match funding;

£114,000 for earth bunding and green-infrastructure work at ten open-space sites vulnerable to unauthorised vehicle access;

£144,000 for a new footbridge across the Hogsmill River;

£1 million for initial community sports infrastructure at Hook Road Arena, conditional upon at least £1 million match funding; and

£2 million for Ewell Village public-realm improvements.

The neighbourhood awards included improvements to Ebbisham Sports and Social Club; tennis and pickleball courts at Poole Road and Gibraltar Recreation Ground; play equipment at St Martin’s School; a Scout tomahawk range; modernisation of the Epsom Beekeepers’ classroom; the Glyn Hall replacement project; and the final phase of a Scout headquarters redevelopment.

A correction made during the meeting reduced the published neighbourhood total from £668,871 to £660,911. Together with the £4.258 million strategic allocation, the corrected package amounted to £4,918,911.

The Council stressed that funding would ordinarily be released only after projects had been completed and that applicants remained responsible for obtaining planning permission, landowner approval and other necessary consents.

Stovell asks councillors to wait

Resident Kristy Stovell had sent councillors and Epsom and Ewell Times an eight-page evidence review before the meeting.

Her primary request was for the whole CIL item to be deferred until the next ordinary committee meeting. As a minimum, she asked councillors to remove the £144,000 Hogsmill bridge allocation from the package pending publication of further information.

Her analysis did not allege that every scheme was unsuitable. Instead, it argued that councillors were being asked to approve almost £4.93 million without complete applications, comparable cost plans, individual scoring, supporting assessments or CIL Working Group records being publicly available in one accessible place.

She noted that all five strategic schemes had been classified as “essential but not time critical”, which she argued allowed time for a short deferment.

Among the concerns raised were the absence from the public pack of full applications and supporting evidence; a lack of published Working Group papers and minutes; inconsistent identification of applicants; incomplete financial comparisons; and reports recording no equality, environmental, safeguarding or crime-and-disorder implications for projects that included a river crossing, earthworks, highways schemes, school play equipment and a Scout tomahawk range.

She asked for the full applications, detailed project costs, previous awards, match funding, Stage One assessments, point-by-point Stage Two scores and Working Group attendance, voting and declarations to be published before a final decision.

Bridge evidence questioned

Ms Stovell’s three-minute public statement concentrated on the proposed Hogsmill footbridge.

She said: “I am not opposing accessibility or the principle of providing safe and inclusive routes. I am asking the committee not to approve a substantial award before the proposal’s financial, environmental, accessibility and delivery evidence has been published and properly examined.”

She said the public documents did not clearly identify the applicant, the precise bridge location, a completed design, the full project cost or the additional design and planning funding required.

She also questioned whether the published material demonstrated a continuous accessible route for wheelchair and mobility-scooter users.

“The project was assessed as essential but not time critical,” she said. “There is therefore no demonstrated need to approve it tonight before the missing information has been supplied.”

She asked councillors to decline the recommendation or defer it until the location, design, complete costs, dependencies, environmental effects and whole-route accessibility had been evidenced and published.

Her longer review noted that the bridge application had been submitted before the Environment Committee selected a bridge option on 30th June. It also questioned the absence of an exact location plan, completed design, environmental and hydrological evidence, and clear maintenance and liability arrangements.

Members asked to trust the Working Group

In the Chair, Cllr Hannah Dalton (RA Stoneleigh) told the committee that it was the final CIL funding round and warned: “If we remove this item, we also lose the funding.”

She said councillors had appointed a cross-party Working Group to examine the applications and “there’s got to be some trust that our colleagues took the time to go through that detail”.

An officer said the Working Group had access to the full bids and supporting information and held four meetings during June to undertake the Stage Two assessments.

Councillor Steve McCormick (Conservative Woodcote and Langley) asked where the minutes of those meetings were and whether members could review them. The officer replied that the scores and decision-making were recorded in what he described as a comprehensive spreadsheet.

Councillor Kate Chinn (Labour Court) said that although councillors were being asked to trust the Working Group, it would have been helpful to see more detail, including the locations of the ten sites covered by the £114,000 green-infrastructure bid.

She also questioned why neighbourhood bids could fail where planning permission was missing while the strategic bridge bid could proceed without permission.

An officer explained that the adopted protocol did not require strategic applicants to have all permissions in place at the application stage, although no project could begin and no money would be released without the necessary approvals.

“A rock and a stepping stone”

The committee also wrestled with whether the proposed footbridge was intended to replace the existing stepping stones.

The published project description stated that the bridge would “replace unsafe stepping stones”. Yet Cllr Dalton said at the meeting that the two issues should be treated separately and proposed removing those words.

Councillor James Lawrence (Independent College) pointed out that the Environment Committee had acknowledged that the Environment Agency would remove the stones and had approved a new bridge as an alternative crossing.

“That reads like ‘replace’ to me,” he said.

Councillor Phil Neale (RA Cuddington) said the Working Group had considered only the bridge but had found itself “between a rock and a hard place—or a rock and a stepping stone”.

He strongly supported the bridge, while suggesting that if the Environment Agency removed the stones, campaigners might put new ones back.

Chief Executive Jackie King clarified that the Environment Agency owned the riverbed and banks but apparently not the stepping stones themselves. Their ownership—and therefore liability—remained uncertain.

She said members had responded to the strength of public feeling by separating construction of the bridge from decisions about the stones.

The committee amended the description to read: “Construction of a new footbridge across the Hogsmill River, providing a safer, more inclusive river crossing.” The words saying it would replace the stones were deleted.

The £144,000 figure was also clarified as including a 20 per cent contingency on an estimated £120,000 construction cost.

Questions over Surrey funding

Several councillors questioned how much Surrey County Council was contributing to the larger schemes.

Councillor John Beckett (RA Auroil) said the Council was being asked to fund £1 million towards cycling and walking infrastructure even though highways were a county responsibility.

He said Surrey appeared not to have “any skin in the game”, although officers explained that Surrey had funded much of an earlier phase and that the Epsom and Ewell contribution was intended to unlock funding from bodies such as Active Travel England.

On the £2 million Ewell Village scheme, Cllr Beckett described Surrey’s approach as presenting the borough with “this kind of fait accompli”.

Officers said Surrey had already spent money progressing the design, while rising material costs had increased the sum required.

Funding approved

No councillor formally moved Ms Stovell’s requested deferment, either for the full package or for the Hogsmill bridge alone.

The committee approved all thirteen recommended awards by six votes to one abstention, subject to the revised bridge wording and corrections to the published figures.

The decision commits the CIL money to the projects, but applicants will still have to secure the relevant permissions and deliver their schemes before receiving payment. The new East Surrey authority will assume responsibility for administering and monitoring CIL expenditure from April 2027.

Sam Jones – Reporter

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