In the November issue of 'The Cherkley Express' Mary Graham
shows familiarity with the LRA Code of Conduct, but not with much else. She will find from proper reading of the
Association's minutes that “leading members of the Cherkley Campaign” did
declare their interests and did not vote on the decision to oppose the
Longshot application.
It was explained in the the LRA Spring Newsletter of this
year why the decision was taken and made clear that the Committee had not been
unduly lobbied by just one side. The
decision was taken on planning grounds as a result of a report prepared
by the LRA Planning Subcommittee whose members had each spent several hours
poring over the voluminous documented submitted for this complex
application. This examination of the
proposal and the subsequent report was made before anyone from the
Cherkley Campaign was known to the Committee.
As for the complaint made by the LRA Planning Subcommittee
about Cllr Dickson, this was about meetings of the LRA on July 4th
and September 5th 2011 and of the Leatherhead & District Forum
on July 13th 2011. All these
meetings took place well before any Cherkley Campaign member was
involved in the LRA.
Ms Graham claims that the plans were “debated in minute detail, not once but twice, by the
Development Control Committee.” That was
not our perception of the debates. The
Council Officers had indeed examined the plans in minute detail and had
recommended their rejection. Ms Graham
fails to mention that when they were debated the first time by the Development Control Committee (DCC), the
Officers' recommendation was rejected by just one vote, and that included the
vote of the Chair who declared which way she intended to vote before the
members of the DCC cast their votes, i.e. without the Chair's vote there would
have been a tie. One would have expected
in that situation that the Officers' recommendation would have been accepted
and that the Longshot proposals would go to appeal.
The second meeting
of the DCC had no option after this first vote but to decide the conditions
which would be attached to approval of the plans.
Ms Graham states,
incorrectly, that “[a] A long serving
and popular Councillor has been independently investigated by a highly
qualified and experienced legal officer and found to be entirely innocent of
all allegations.” As the legal officer's
report is confidential, one wonders how she can state this so authoritatively. This incorrect information is repeated at
greater length on page 2. The report
does not clear Cllr Dickson of
the seven complaints; it merely states the legal officer did not find clear
evidence that Cllr Dickson had contravened the MVDC Code of Conduct.
It is our opinion
that in view of the repeated misrepresentation of the report, both by Cllr
Dickson herself and by The Cherkley Express, that the report should be put into
the public domain so that people can judge the truth of these claims
themselves.
The claim from an
unnamed local resident that “officers at MVDC have spent hours responding to a
mountain of correspondence from the seven individuals who lodged the original
complaints” is laughable. We know this
not to be true.
Page 3 reminds us
that our MP, Sir Paul Beresford intervened to ask the Secretary of State not to
call in the application. Once again an
opportunity for this contentious plan to be decided by an independent outside
party was rejected. If the Longshot proposals
are really so wonderful, why are their supporters so desperate to see that the
decision remains in Mole
Valley ?
Then page 4 gives
us the final insult. We have a 'before'
and 'after' picture. The golf course has
not been constructed; there can be no 'after' other than an artist's impression,
for what it is worth. Do those
responsible for The Cherkley Express really expect people to believe that the
countryside will still look the same after a golf course is constructed?
Civic Trust member.
No comments:
Post a Comment