Oakham Neighbourhood Plan Oakham Town Council Budget Increase and Failure to Apply for Grants

Oakham Neighbourhood Plan Oakham Town Council Budget Increase and Failure to Apply for Grants

For nearly a year Oakham Town Council has been working with a limited number of
people from the community to produce a neighbourhood plan. We are not anywhere near the
stage that other council would at, at this time. A lot of public money has been wasted.
on so little. Now Cllr Haley who is running the show and excludes resident he does not like
from being involved in the plan, inclusion of all is a vital elliment of the preperation of the
plan. Even though Melton's was rejected for failing on inclusion Cllr Haley still refuses to permit
all residents to take part. I understand not all would want to be involved but when they offer
they should not be ordered to leave a public meeting or told becasue they are excluded from
Council working groups they are also excluded from their neighbourhood plan.



Dear Cllr Michael Haley

in the draft budget you have put a figure of £10000 in the estimate for the N Plan

in your agenda item you ask for an increase of £9500 this figure is then used to
set the demand from the tax payers it does not take into consideration the
the sum of the grant application of £6,500

So once again residents are being asked to over pay like the cemetery as
another example.

As for Grant Application it is appalling that the N Plan steering group has delayed
applying for the many grants that were available.

If you had attended the events put on the LRRCC at RCC early last year you
would have heard that some grants would not be available after 2016.

Also the LRRCC poiunted out they were not the only organisations who
could assist with the Neighbourhood Plan process. Has the steering group
approached any of the other organisations to find costings.

I have observed what the group has done so far and most of what I have seen
is not relevant to preparing the plan. When you learnt you needed to engage the
public after the Melton issue you went out on the street and repeated your
first activity over and over. Showing a map and asking people to write on
Post-it notes.

A lot of the requests made by the public on these post-it's would be relevant if the
town council was producing a plan for the council which it seems to think it
does not need or even a town plan. both of which would probably be of more benefit for
the residents we are meant to serve.

I was also astonished to hear your response to the public when they said the
pack containing a map made no sense. You said  it was delibrate and intended to
be that way, to engage the public. Really? you wasted thousands of pounds of
tax payers money to get them to engage!

From

Martin Brookes Cllr OSE