It was with some amusement that I started to read the article ‘The great Brightwells giveaway as shop is offered for free’ in the Farnham Herald of the February 20, 2025. The phrase that amused me was its description as “one of Surrey’s most vibrant shopping and lifestyle destinations”.

When I went and looked at the development on Saturday, I could see about half-a-dozen people meandering about and an enormous amount of empty retail units. I couldn’t, for the life of me, see any ‘vibrancy’ there!

As for trying to entice some independent business owners to the area I feel that offering one retail unit rent-free for a year will have minimal impact on attracting additional businesses. A single business retailer may be encouraged to take advantage of the offer, but will one new business create enough additional footfall to attract additional retailers who will have to pay the full rent? I will be pleasantly surprised if it does.

To my mind, if one is trying to establish a shopping area as an attractive place to visit and provide a significant number of shops to maintain interest and encourage footfall and trade, it is imperative to try and attract businesses at the earliest opportunity and maintain their presence for as long a period as possible. I don’t think that this is a short-term process.

To establish a shopping area and encourage a good footfall, it is necessary to maintain businesses in the same premises so that the public and locale become aware that this shopping area can provide them with what they are after. If the retail units keep changing owners, no loyalty to the area is established and people have no reason to return there.

The basic idea of a reduced rent for a period of time is a good one I think, but its implementation is far too optimistic. It assumes that a single business will attract more who will be required to pay the full-market rate rent. These additional retailers will still face the same problem of trying to run a profitable business with a large overhead and a low footfall.

To reduce the large overheads, which have been recognised as a significant business cost by the single rent-free offer, why not extend the reduced rent offer to all the units in the Brightwells development?

My suggestion is a three-year reduced rent period, with an increase in rent gradually over the next three years. I am venturing that this staggered rent rate would attract businesses to the area and encourage them to stay long enough for the development to establish itself as somewhere worthwhile to shop.

The basic premise is that the offer must be maintained for long enough to enable the development to establish itself. It must be better in the long term to have a lower, rising rental income than to have most of the units sitting there with no rental income and gathering dust, thereby reducing the ‘vibrancy’ of the development to zero.

Jim Goebel

Bonners Field

Bentley

If Brightwells is struggling with empty units, they should make another approach to M&S - despite the setbacks of their first attempt.

Going cap in hand and presenting an attractive offer could turn things around.

Once M&S is in, it will attract more retailers and residents, breathing new life into the area. Farnham needs an M&S.

Les Wyld

Summer Road

Farnham

Leaving aside his appalling puns, I couldn’t help agreeing with Nick Williams when he concluded that our MP must have been spending a bit too long in our local hostelries (Letters, Herald, February 20).

Last week’s column by Tory MP Greg Stafford (Herald, February 20) did indeed read like the scribblings of a gentleman who’d enjoyed a particularly good session.

In wine there is truth, as the saying goes, so it was interesting and perhaps gracious that he conceded that Labour is making “progress” through its increased investment in NHS hospitals and infrastructure locally.

But his comments about joining up NHS services read as if the Tory party had been in the political wilderness for decades, rather than in government for the past 14 years.

The whole focus of Conservative policies on the NHS has been to centralise our services, cherry picking the easy bits for the private sector and leaving the difficult parts to an underfunded state rump.

And, by refusing to pay doctors, dentists, nurses and social care staff adequately, the Tories ensured further erosion of local services and more fragmentation, with the result that patients are now pushed from pillar to post - often travelling for hours- in search of the right treatment.

It will soon be time for the Labour government to stop blaming their predecessors, but I for one won’t be exonerating the Conservatives any time soon.

Mr Stafford should take a closer look at the chaos his party has wreaked upon our once proud healthcare system. It makes for sobering reading.

Anne Chard

St James Avenue

Farnham

Well done to the Farnham Society for objecting to the toilet block on Gostrey Meadow. Yes, we need new toilets next to an extended playground there. No to such a large block which looks like a fancy warehouse, and is quite out of scale, design and character to our bandstand and nearby conservation buildings.

Apparently, Farnham Town Council has worked on this proposal for years so why do they refuse to consult local groups and residents? How many hundreds of thousands of pounds will the toilets cost and how much taxpayers' money has already been spent on consultants?

Farnham residents can look at the Waverley Borough Council website planning section and search application 2025/WA/00099 and tell the planners what you think.

Sue Taylor

Upper Hale Road

Farnham

As a reader of the Herald, I must comment on your otherwise extremely interesting article on shoplifting in Haslemere in the February 13 edition of the paper. In the second paragraph you use the word "gotten". This is a horrible Americanism and does not belong in a newspaper aimed at an English audience.

Sorry to be a pedant, but that word really jumped out and spoilt my reading. It should surely read "shoplifting has got so bad", or "has become so bad", never "gotten".

David Blower

Alton