Oakham and Barleythorpe Neighbourhood Draft Plan

Oakham and Barleythorpe Neighbourhood Draft Plan

It was planned and advertised on the agenda that Oakham Town Council would be discussing
and approving the draft plan.

Cllrs were very unhappy that Cllr Adam Lowe Chairman at the very last moment withdrew
the item from the agenda.

The agenda item was unlawfully withdrawn, The Chairman does not have unilateral powers to withdraw any item. Standing order do give the full council the right to defer items if further information is required.

It was probably good he did withdraw the item as he wanted to persuade the council to unlawfully exclude the public and press.

The draft which I will soon publish is so embarrassing, it is full of mistakes not only in spelling and grammar it does not consider current government guidance for high street many planning laws.

The few old guys who wrote the plan are stuck in pre 1980's mode.

No coffee shops in the high street. any vacant shop must remain vacant for a min of 12 months before a change of use can be considered.

The only community aspiration for Oakham appears to be fixing the skate park and perhaps a new one or two. The plan is meant to be about planning and development of the town and it states houses can only be constructed in groups of twenty it lacks maps and is only 82 pages the first 27 are complete complete utter garbage a brief opinionated history of Oakham.

Figures show that smallest amount of resident involvement.

It finishes with a suggestion we support the scouts guides and cadets what that has to do with neighbourhood planning policy is still to be explained.

From reading some of Cllr Lowes emails I get the impression he was expecting the council to just rubber stamp the draft and was only going to permit each councillor three minutes to speak and then it could just go out to public consultation. I don't think he was expecting such an outcry of objection from most town councillors. It did surprise me.

We have spent thousand of pounds of local residents money on a document that is complete disgrace.
Who ever put it together was also great with cut and pasting as many paragraphs are repeated page after page and then there are the obvious contradictory statements.

The council is to blame for this mess because it failed to correctly monitor the progress of its working group. I often raised concerns when Cllr Michael Haley gave very poor reports to council each month fortunately those comments are minuted. He would just provide us with a document which was just just like a diary of one line entries not a fully comprehensive report.
When he left the council our new rep on the working Adam Lowe gave us nothing.