Involving and informing the public
It’s basic, the Council is elected by the taxpayers to represent them in the best democratic
way it can. Every Councillor has a voice and if they want to ask questions they should without
the abuse and defamation the Rutland Anti-Corruption Group has endured over the last year.
If the largest group choose to delegate additional duties and responsibilities to the Chief Executive
and the Portfolio holder for Finance and Asset management, fine. However, as an elected councillor
I am entitled to follow events and know what negotiations have taken place and with whom on a
regular basis.
I was not permitted to be part of the negotiations for projects in my ward but later asked to
see the minutes of the meetings with individual land owners and developers but was prevented.
For me this was the start of the current unjustifiable and extraordinary attacks upon the
RAC Group, hence the call for Openness and Transparency.
What is the full and true reasoning to move the Post 16 College away from town? Why accept a significant reduction in the numbers of affordable homes on the Hawksmeade development?
Can the public please be shown the evidence that supported this reduction when other
development sites can provide 35% in the same economic climate?
Why does the majority group seem to support the ‘flexing’ of planning just to give a
developer a greater value when this flexing significantly reduces public access to sports field,
recreation land and important open space?
The Barleythorpe Road site amounts to four and a half acres, why does it need to be five
and a half acres unless there is a ‘hidden’ reason? Is the undisclosed plan to place a
supermarket here although Planning Officers have identified other suitable site close by?
I ask the Council to answer these questions, make all the answers available to the wider
public before we go any further. There is nothing wrong with having suspicions. What is wrong
is when the answers to the questions to support or dispel those suspicions are withheld.
