A benefit of being a Councillor, if you can call it that, is to be able to dress up in a high visibility yellow jacket, protective hat and gloves, oh, and not forgetting a pair of ill-fitting steel toe-capped wellies, for a short visit to the ATRIUM development in the centre of Camberley.

Guided round the building site by the locally-based developers’ [Crest Nicholson] project directors, gave us a chance to view progress. We saw some of the completed residential apartments, and what is clear is that this will be a superb addition to the centre of Camberley, both in its architectural design and building finish.

We looked in on some of the completed flats, their balconies and pleasing aspects. I was impressed by the finish and the very high quality fitments. I particularly liked the solid wood doors, they gave an immediate quality ambiance. [Must ask where they can be obtained]

I do recommend you take a look at the developer’s website ATRIUM-CAMBERLEY, it’ll tell you lots more than I can.

I’ve a couple of observations to make, things that surprised me, though I guess they shouldn’t:

• the sheer number of people working on the building site – hundreds and hundreds
• Eastern Europen accents
• project offices without absolute mountains of achitectural and project plans – apparently they only download the plans they need from their central computer centre

Oh, and one more thing I learned, Crest Nicholson are the developers for the old Quinetq [DERA] site at Longcross, near Chertsey, and that’s good that local developers are in charge, I’m sure they’ll better respect the local character of North West Surrey.

I’m confident that Surrey Heath will have a town centre in Camberley’s Atrium of which can all be proud.