New clues over Surrey sinkhole after network of tunnels discovered

Months after a massive sinkhole sparked a major incident in Surrey, a network of underground Victorian tunnels have been discovered close to the site.

Residents of quiet Surrey village of Godstone were told to “get out as quickly as possible” after a huge crater swallowed a street overnight on February 17.

More than 30 homes were evacuated as the sinkhole grew to up 19 metres in length, before a second one opened up days later.

Engineers working to repair the hole have now confirmed the discovery of abandoned sand mining tunnels around the site, which may “provide a clue” into what caused the havoc.

Lloyd Allen, infrastructure manager at Surrey County Council, told the BBC: “Currently, we’re investigating the Victorian tunnels, plotting them to see the extent of them and where they go.

“We’ll likely be finished by the early part of December, but there’s a lot of reconnecting services and redoing water mains, gas mains and electric cables.”

He told the broadcaster that the discovery of the eight-metre deep tunnels “puts one of the pieces into place” over why the hole opened up, but added there were “several scenarios that could have happened that led to this collapse”.

In February, an expert suggested the incident could be related to the collapse of a nearby abandoned sand mine.

Andrew Farrant, the British Geological Survey (BGS) regional geologist for southeast England, said how old maps of the area, published in 1872, appeared to show an entrance to a sand mine very close to the crater.

“It is possible other unrecorded sand mines occurred in this area,” Farrant said. “It is also possible that a leaking pipe has weakened the rock and led to the failure of a putative mine, assuming it exists and extended under the road. Equally, it is possible that gradual failure of a mine roof caused the water main to fail, triggering further subsidence.”

While engineers say they hope the repairs to be finished by December, local businesses told the BBC they have been “left in the dark” over the repair plans.

One businesses owner said his income had been slashed to a third of what it once was due to the sinkhole.

“They said they would keep us up to date, but this hasn’t happened,” Shane Fry, who runs DD Services, a garage on the high street said.

“We need to know. It will benefit everyone in the area.”

Will McLean, the owner of a residential windows and doors company described how the sinkhole had “reduced footfall to virtually zero”.

“Financially it has been massive,” he said.”In terms of business, we are down 60% to 70%, which is huge – devastating in fact.”

Matt Furniss, Cabinet Member Highways, Transport and Economic Growth at Surrey County Council, said, “This continues to be a highly complex incident involving a number of investigations led by our Highways Officers and other agencies, including specialist teams and utility companies.

“We are continuing to update local residents and businesses as we progress through each stage of the process. We’re also looking at how we can minimise the impact on local businesses while the necessary road closures are in place.

“Thorough investigations need to continue to understand the cause of the collapse and subsequently how we fully and effectively repair the area. We hope to have the road re-opened during December this year, but our focus will be on ensuring the road is safe to use so the exact date will be confirmed once we are fully assured of this.”

Met Office issue thunderstorm warning as UK braces for wet weekend

The Met Office has issued a thunderstorm warning in parts of England and Wales as the UK braces for a weekend washout.

The yellow weather warning on Saturday covers southern England, parts of the midlands, London, east England and south Wales.

Frequent heavy showers and thunderstorms are expected for much of Saturday, before fading from the west during the mid to late afternoon.

The Met Office warned 10-15 mm of rain could fall in less than an hour, whilst some places could see 30-40 mm of rain over several hours from successive showers and thunderstorms.

The storm could also bring lightning, hail and strong, gusty winds which will cause additional hazards.

Delays to public transport including buses and trains is expected and driving conditions could also be affected by spray and standing water leading to longer journey times.

Damage to buildings from lightening strikes and short term loss of power is also likely, the Met Office warned.

Temperatures are also set to drop on Saturday with lows of 10C expected in London and 7C forecast in Glasgow.

The stormy weekend comes after Britain saw the sunniest and warmest start to spring on record and the driest spring in over a century.

More than 600 hours of sunshine were clocked up across the country between March 1 and May 27.

Despite the predicted wash out weekend the Met Office’s three-month outlook predicts that the chance of a hot summer is higher than normal, bringing an increased risk of heatwaves and heat-related impacts.

The outlook shows it is 2.3 times more likely than normal that the UK will be hot over meteorological summer, which begins on 1 June and ends on 31 August.

The average temperatures across the UK over those months range from 10-17C, with the south east of England experiencing the higher averages of 16-17C.

The Musk-Trump spectacle distracted from this very important meeting

As the inevitable bust-up between a quixotic US president and his wayward billionaire tech guru was erupting into colourful headlines around the world, a tall, grey, spectacled man, very different in character from either, was quietly leaving the White House with his entourage.

This was Friedrich Merz, the head of Germany’s new government, who had just completed his first visit to the Oval Office as chancellor. It was a meeting that may prove of more lasting significance for the wider world than the verbal fireworks between Donald Trump and Elon Musk.

In the main, the Trump-Merz encounter went well – no doubt to an extent, because foreign leaders visiting the White House are learning. As the two sat side by side in the Oval Office, it was hard not to believe that Merz had not spent some preparation time studying the worst (the ambush of Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky) and the best (the smoothly authoritative defence of Canada by Mark Carney) examples of how to handle Donald Trump.

Beyond some token flattery, Chancellor Merz began by saying comparatively little, helped along by a US press corps far more interested in domestic politics, including Trump v Musk, than in US-German relations. He piped up a little more on Germany’s rising defence spending – eliciting a jocular aside from Trump about how there was a time when a German leader announcing increased military spending would not have been so well received in the US – before touching on the vexed tariff question, with the two jointly accepting that any bilateral discussions would have to be continued in the EU context.

When questions turned to Ukraine, however, the first signs of dissent appeared, with Merz waxing almost voluble in 100 per cent support of Ukraine – although it was not immediately apparent whether Trump fully understood this, whether he might have chosen to leave any points of friction for later, or whether he was just in a good mood (which he certainly appeared to be).

In all, though, it would appear that Germany, under its new centre-right chancellor, is well on the way to becoming the de facto EU, and maybe European, leader in relations with the United States, with Trump clearly appreciating that Merz was not Angela Merkel – who he initially referred to only as “her”, along with Germany’s apparent ambition to become a model defence spender, at 5 per cent of GDP. Merz’s facility with the English language, his legal and business background, not to mention his towering 6ft 6in height (three inches more than Trump), all probably helped too.

If the tariff question was set to be a big topic at the lunch and the talks that followed the Oval Office exchanges, however, it looked destined to take second place to Ukraine. This is partly because someone else is the point-person for trade talks – the EU’s accomplished trade commissioner, Maros Sefcovic. But more because of the urgency that shone out through everything the two leaders had said about Ukraine in their responses to journalists, as well as the sharp differences that what they said – and they said quite a lot – revealed about the thinking on either side of the Atlantic.

And what stood out here, for all the surface bonhomie, offered few grounds for optimism. After weeks in which, it had seemed, the Europeans and the US had been making efforts to reconcile their approaches to the Ukraine war, the size of the gap looks almost as wide as ever.

Both now profess to want the earliest possible end to the war, which marks a change from the European line a few weeks ago, when the argument from London and Paris was that now was not the time to stop fighting and that Europe’s military support for Ukraine had to be boosted, both to replace any retreat by the US and to maintain pressure on Russia. That, however, is almost where the agreement stops.

What was said in the Oval Office showed that while Trump wants talks now, he has a deadline in mind for Russia and Ukraine to agree, and has a new sanctions package nearly ready to go. He still sees himself – despite recently calling Russia’s President Putin “crazy” – as the enabler of peace, standing in the middle.

Denying that he was friends with Putin – “I’m no one’s friend,” he said – he refused to blame Russia alone, and compared Russia and Ukraine to kids fighting in a playground who were not yet ready to be separated, however much damage they were inflicting on each other. The fighting, he accepted, would probably go on for a while yet.

Merz, on the other hand, while accepting that the US was the “key” to any agreement, insisted that he, and Europe, were entirely on Ukraine’s side and they were “looking for more pressure on Russia”. He went so far as to laud Ukraine for “never” targeting civilians in their attacks – something Russia would contest in the light, most recently, of an attack on a bridge when a train was passing over.

And when Trump insisted that his determination to end the war was “not about the money, well, it’s a little bit the money, but it’s not the big thing. It’s the deaths and decimation” on both sides, Merz spoke only of Ukrainian deaths.

While Merz’s view is not shared completely across Europe – Hungary, Slovakia and to an extent Italy would align themselves more with Trump – it is the prevailing EU position, and the one forcefully represented by the UK. Any recent hints of movement towards a single Western approach, it would seem, are just that. That Merz gave not the slightest hint of any movement towards Trump’s position on the war suggested that the two sides of the Atlantic remain almost as far apart on what should happen next as Russia and Ukraine.