Cllr Jim Swift post on Save Shawwood Greenspace Facebook page -
14 January 2019
Jim Swift
4 hrs
Some questions I have for the director of the environment (DoE) at the Council at our next Audit and Scrutiny meeting. I have sent these to him. If you feel you can add to the beneath, I would as always welcome your thoughts.
1. In a consultation, my position would be there should be an equivalent weight given to each of the elements on offer.
Does Mr Cahill agree with that statement or should one particular outcome, if it is preferred by staff be promoted within a consultation and if so, should it not be outlined as such?
Option 4 had the longest description in the consultation with a shopping list of benefits and no dis-benefits (unlike the others), emotive but actually meaningless phrases like “future-proof” were used and no costs like opportunity cost, loss of wildlife, loss of free greenspace amenity, access constraints and travel difficulties etc. were not explored.
Photos showing large and expansive gym areas in option 4, unlike cramped photos in options 1 and 2.
I could go on, but hopefully the DoE gets the point that I and others including an expert do not think the consultation was anything other than very substantially biased.
2. Why was the consultation held prior to the evaluation of sites by T&T? This would have enabled a fairer consultation, as people would have understood better what they were opining upon in relation to access in particular and a more concrete view of what would be lost.
Why was Eastwood Park not included in the sites made available for a proposed new leisure centre?
Why was the T&T report on the future of Eastwood Park not made available to Councillors and the public prior to the consultation?
3.Elderly people who will pay for the LC through Council Tax, but be very unlikely to care about extended LC facilities were excluded by the predominately on-line nature of the consultation. Why was the consultation not extensively promoted beyond the social media environment, given the enormous potential spend and that the Council has a duty to consider the opinions of older people?
4.It is not nimbyism to consider the impact of development on those who live closest to the site of development. Why was no special consideration given to the proposed sites’ nearby residents, so those who would potentially benefit most from the enhanced facilities and / or benefit the least by the loss of green space and all of the issues that are associated with that to enable more of a voice for those most advantaged / most disadvantaged, many of whom did not know about the consultation?
5. In the other T&T report that sought to identify potential sites for a leisure centre. There was no scoring mechanism proscribed for the sub-domains, so that all the sites would be treated equally and the actual analysis could be taken apart and fully understood, as to how and why the scores arrived at were arrived at?
6. Does the DoE agree that not being transparent with pertinent information, biasing a consultation, excluding key information from the initial report on that consultation and a black box methodology for the choice of sites gives room to the view that the outcome was predetermined and the Council has not acted in an even handed and open way?
7. It is my contention that this exercise has damaged the Council’s reputation for being an honest broker. Surely the best way to restore people’s faith in ERC would be an admission of the mistakes made and a plan to regain the trust of the public.
What will the DofE do to try to restore the public’s trust in ERC?
Forum
