| Topic: | Re:Re:Re:Front page article re. area planning committees | |
| Posted by: | Phil Andrews | |
| Date/Time: | 03/06/11 16:12:00 |
| It is the 0.9% that is likely to involve points of contention, and which would benefit from local knowledge and some political direction based upon an understanding of local concerns (I am aware that planners are not much interested in local concerns and prefer to be guided by Plans, Directives and Strategies, but the impact of a development on a local community is a material planning consideration and in my view probably the most important one). The document reads: "It (the Report before Borough Council) proposes the continuation of the area monitoring committees in their present form to assume some of the functions currently carried out by the Area Planning Committees until new area arrangements are established which give effect to the Council’s ambitions for greater community engagement." I would have been more reassured had the Report been presented to Borough Council in the name of the Lead Member whose responsibility it is, rather than of the chief officer whose brainchild it clearly was. As for "the Council's ambitions for greater community engagement", I will not be so churlish as to dismiss these out of hand without first knowing what they are, and I would be grateful if anybody associated with the current administration at Hounslow would be able to give us a heads-up on this. It would be ironic indeed if the cause of community engagement were to be advanced beyond what we in the ICG were able to achieve by a political leadership whose antagonism towards the same led to the rise of the community movement and its involvement in electoral politics up to 2010, but any sense of irony gives way to incredulity when it arrives via the pen of a person who did more than any other to frustrate the work of community councillors on the Isleworth & Brentford Area Committee during the latter years of the last administration. More information on these "ambitions for greater community engagement" would therefore be really helpful, and gratefully received. In the meantime what view does the sole opposition party on the council take of this latest development? A development so important and urgent that it was felt necessary to take the unusual step of including it on the agenda of an Annual Borough Meeting? Was this apparent assualt on local democracy resisted, or its raison d'etre at least challenged? Or was it supported on the simple basis that it will save a few quid? |