| Topic: | Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:Front page article re. area planning committees | |
| Posted by: | Phil Andrews | |
| Date/Time: | 09/06/11 15:53:00 |
| Adam You are right not to speculate, and as you have probably gathered I have not named the officers in question because I know full well that I cannot substantiate the things I have said. I was never in the habit of recording conversations with officers, therefore this was never going to go any further. Suffice it to say that in terms of the London Borough of Hounslow's officer hierarchy they were about as senior as it gets. Your suggested "explanation" for their actions does however forget one rather important fact - I was not a member of SDC at the time that the conversations took place. Therefore any lobbying of myself, however pure and altruistic the motives for such may have been, would have been singularly pointless unless I was being asked to influence those Community Group members who sat on SDC. And for me to have done this would have been unlawful. For what it is worth the thought has never entered my head for a moment that either officer did what he did for reasons of financial impropriety or for any material gain. I saw their actions in terms of the (small "p") political battle that was going on at the time between chief officers in general and Environment in particular on the one hand, and the various residents' groups in Isleworth on the other. But please spare me any suggestion or inference that when it comes to planning matters officers are above the kind of negative and petty politicking that certain councillors engage in. I saw enough during my last four years as an elected member to satisfy me that this is most certainly not the case, and the higher up the food chain the worse it became. |