Mole Valley 14 Liberal Democrats, and 7 Independents (6 Ashtead Independents and 1 Beare Green Independent). There are no Labour, UKIP or Green Party councillors. Surrey County Council, elected every four years, obtains six representatives from this area: The district, named after the River Mole, was formed on 1 April 1974, under the Local Government Act 1972, by a merger of the urban districts of Dorking and Leatherhead and most of the Dorking and Horley Rural District. A Legatum Prosperity Index published by the Legatum Institute in October 2016 showed Mole Valley as the second most prosperous council area in the United
Mole (animal) shrew-moles differ from the common definition of "mole". In Middle English, moles were known as "moldwarp". The expression "don't make a mountain out of a mole hill" – exaggerating problems – was first recorded in Tudor times. By the era of Early Modern English, the mole was also known in English as "mouldywarp", a word having cognates in other Germanic languages such as German ("Maulwurf"), and Danish, Norwegian, Swedish and Icelandic ("muldvarp", "mullvad", "moldvarpa"), where the "muld/mull/mold" part of the word means soil and the "varp/vad/varpa" part means throw, hence "one who throws soil" or "dirt tosser". Male moles are