The farce continued at the DC meeting on Thursday when Councillors met to determine the hospital site planning application. It was as expected a foregone conclusion with the Liberal Democrat majority following the party line set by their leader Ed Davey voting for the proposal and the Conservative minority voting against.
Lip service was paid to the excellent case presented by the members of OADRA and others, but it was a gesture towards democracy – a sop to the masses. Councillor Parekh on three occasions stated how he was the Ward representative, but he represented nobody except his party’s interests. It will ever be thus until we have Residents’ Association Councillors who actually live and have an allegiance to the Ward. We should be thinking seriously about this.
One member of OADRA, who has spoken before, also spoke in favour of the proposal, but unfortunately he was not concerned with the alternatives that exist.
The OADRA Committee are looking at what they can do next. The proposal has to be approved by the Greater London Office, and we shall try and influence them. We could do with a good planning lawyer in the Association – step forward any volunteers!
Thanks to all the people and members from other resident associations who turned up to hear the proceedings – it was a salutary lesson, with a wonderfully biased summing up by Madam Chairman.
Sorry to have to say what follows but I feel I would be doing OADRA no good service by not saying it.
ReplyDeleteAny elected councillor should have an allegiance to the ward and I certainly did and do. However RA councillors are not the answer to your present problem. Such cllrs would be open to exactly the same accusation of prejudicial interest and predetermination as the present ones. This would be especially the case if the RA had mounted the sort of campaign against a planning application that OADRA has done in this instance. If, in such a case, planning consent had been refused with an RA cllr in the same position as Cllr. Parekh, the applicant would have a right of appeal to the Planning Inspectorate on the grounds of prejudicial interest. The outcome of such an appeal would depend on whether the Inspector agreed with the interpretation of 'predetermination' you had from Mr. Bessant and I had from Mr. Bishop. The same right doesn't apply in the case of permission being granted, by the way.
It seems to me that OADRA's ability to mount compaigns of this sort depends on the RA NOT having the formal links with members of the Council that its adoption of candidates at elections might well give them.
Paul, I think we will have to agree to differ on this, there are many examples of this working very well across the country, and with the current PM's vision of residents getting more involved with local decisions and plans, this is the way forward.
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