Wednesday 14th January 2014
Warminster Town Councillor Steve Dancey has published his take on the controversial meeting of the Planning Advisory Committee of Warminster Town Council, held at Warminster Civic Centre, yesterday.
It was a meeting where four Town Councillors completely ignored the majority wishes of the East Ward electorate and Bishopstrow, by crazily voting in favour of a planning application to build houses for rich people on part of a flood plain.
One of these Councillors, Jamie Cullen, had previously voted against, but changed his mind and voted for this ludicrous scheme ~ ludicrous because the site, a watermeadow called Spurt Mead has a known history of flooding ~ while Councillor Fraser thought it would boost trade in Warminster shops (she is a shopkeeper) and Councillor Rob Fryer okayed it because he wanted access to the River Wylye there (for wild-swimming) even though he can access the river at Smallbrook nearby and at umpteen places on its 25 mile route (with the permission of the riparian owners of course).
Steve Dancey writes ~
“I could hardly believe it – comments about the ‘best deal we will get’, ‘setting east against west’, ‘the 38 homes will provide more demand in Warminster shops’ and they swallowed whole the glib arguments put forward by the team hired by Holdoways [HPH. Ltd.] as if they were professional council officers.”
“No boys and girls, these ‘professional experts’ are there to put the very best gloss on the proposal in a bid to land your vote.”
“They even entered into pre-meeting discussions with some councillors – very smelly behaviour in my view and not something that was allowed when I sat on the county planning authority.”
“It was hardly a very convincing demonstration of the way to look at planning.”
“No, this proposal is outside the settlement boundary and we should have backed the Core Strategy which has been prepared in the interest of protecting Warminster by people employed by us (Council officers). I trust County members will listen to Cllr. Andrew Davis (who argued his case well on Monday) if the matter is aired at Western Area Planning.”
“Just because people are rich and have owned the land for a long time doesn’t mean they have the god-given right to develop this site. They’ve been trying for years and have been stopped. ‘The best deal we can get’ is to keep it as it is.”
You can read more of Councillor Dancey’s comments on this ‘rotten to the core’ meeting on Vision For Warminster, click here.