Broadland District Council have known for months that they were planning the 200 home Exemplar project which was launched at the Rackheath fun day on 22nd August. Why then was it only yesterday (1st September) that it first got a mention on their website? Surely this delay prunes over a week off the consultation period for people who didn't attend the fun day. (Closing date is 29th October)
Why aren't BDC giving residents the opportunity of responding to the questionnaire on-line - this is 2010 for heaven's sake! Cherwell have done it - why not Broadland? Have they worked out that people are actually a little lazy and probably won't go to the trouble of downloading the questionnaire, filling it in and then posting it? Do they think they won't get much of a response in that case? It is 38 pages long so they might just be right!
It appears that several of their 'opportunities' for local people to learn more about the Exemplar have, in fact, been failures as the venues were locked and no BDC staff were available. Is this what BDC classify as consultation?
This is not a consultation but merely another farce - don't we deserve a better council here who actually work with and for their local communities? Why does one always get the feeling that they are trying to pull the wool over our eyes and get the better of us?
If what you say is accurate, there MUST be grounds for a legal challenge to this 'consultation' (and others).
ReplyDeleteHas anyone contacted the Environmental Law Foundation? I haven't got their details to hand but if you Google the name, you'll get there.
If, as I say, your allegations are accurate, this can't possibly be dismissed as mere incompetence (though that would be bad enough), but must be regarded as a deliberate ploy to minimise the number of responses, ie: number of objections. This cannot be within the spirit or letter of the law.
I see Broadland did not mention the fact that some GRADE TWO farmland was going to be destroyed by these 200 urban high density houses. Have they got NO SENSE at all.
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