A council committee has refused to confer their highest honor to their local army regiment, claiming it was “not local enough”.

Epsom and Ewell Council Strategy and Resources Committee voted against Councillor Sean Sullivan’s proposal to bestow the Freedom of the Borough upon the Princess of Wales’s Royal Regiment, at a meeting on Tuesday.

Four members of the committee spoke against it, including residents’ association councillor Robert Leach, who claimed the links of the regiment with the borough were “tenuous.”

Coun Leach said: “It’s an award handed if there’s a particular relevant connection with this borough, and I can’t see it. Coun Sullivan was struggling a bit to try to think of one.”

The motion to honor the Guildford-based regiment, which represents East Surrey, including Epsom, was denied by five votes to one.

Coun Sullivan, Conservative leader of the council, said: “There are friends of mine from my college in Oxford who died in conflict and friends of mine who are serving now. It’s a very current issue for my generation.

“It would be wrong and downright offensive to refuse to honor this regiment. It would go down horrendously for this borough to do so. Thirteen other councils around the country have bestowed the honor and I think we should be the next borough to do so.”

Another councillor who opposed it, Lib Dem Colin Taylor, said: “I question whether this gesture of conferring Freedom of the Borough is really what our borough army service really want or need. I don’t think the armed forces are looking for a bunch of councils giving them Freedom of the Borough.”

The local branch of the Princess of Wales’s Regiment is The East Surrey Regiment (31st and 70th Foot). If the honor had been conferred to them, troops returning from the war would have been able to parade the streets of Epsom.

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