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
River Mole is thought to have merged with the River Wey near Byfleet and then flowed in a north-easterly direction via Richmond to meet the proto-Thames near Ware in Hertfordshire, (today the Mole and Wey are less than apart at their closest point near Painshill Park). During the Middle Pleistocene period, a large ice sheet built up across much of the East of England, reaching as far south as St Albans and Chelmsford, blocking the path of the proto-Thames. Glacial meltwater from the Anglian ice sheet, caused the Thames to divert southwards and flood the valley of the Mole–Wey river, thus adopting