‘Eye-watering’: how Woking council’s glittering dream turned to dust

Woking, with an annual council tax take of £11m, is paying £62m a year to service £1.8bn in loans on assets worth £600m less than what was paid for them. Photograph: Sophia Evans/The Observer

In the autumn of 2020, the Tory leader of Woking council announced he was stepping down. In his valedictory speech, David Bittleston insisted Woking was not merely the best council in the country but was going places. “Ahead of us, this borough has an exciting future,” he declared.

Bittleston’s self-congratulatory boosterism was par for the course. He and the town’s municipal leaders were signed up to a grandiose high-rise vision that would transform the modest commuter town in leafy Surrey into a glittering modern city, Singapore-style economic hub and “premier global business location”.