Your Letters: Parties, Lib Dem joy, and a question of consultation - The Redditch Standard

Your Letters: Parties, Lib Dem joy, and a question of consultation

Redditch Editorial 27th Dec, 2021   0

IT WAS good to see the public turn out in force in North Shropshire to drive home the message that the people of Britain have had enough of the double standards on display by our Government.

That they’ve had enough of broken promises, enough broken rules and enough sleaze for a life time.

The brilliant result for the Lib Dems (a swing of 29,000 votes) in one of this country’s safest Conservative seats, makes the public’s discontent clearer than ever.

It should serve as a wake up call for Conservative administrations across the country, including the one at Redditch Borough Council.




No seat is safe in the upcoming May elections.

Huge congratulations to Helen Morgan MP and the North Shropshire Liberal Democrats in delivering this decisive message to Mr Johnson. Honesty clarity and transparency is needed in government.


M Tomes

Redditch Liberal Democrats 

I HAVE written to the monitoring officer for Redditch Borough Council to raise an issue with the conduct of two borough councillors over their remarks at the Overview and Scrutiny meeting on December 13, 2021.

Councillors Emma Marshall and David Thain both claimed there had been consultation over the issue of future cemetery provision on the basis that Council Leader Matthew Dormer had invited people to talk to him about it.

Whilst talking to residents may be part of ‘consulting’ this is clearly misleading, and I quote: “The term [consultation] is usually applied when talking about activities where different parties are trying to reach an agreement or for more formal or detailed pieces of work aimed at finding out what residents think about significant changes or proposals that affect them, such as … redevelop a local area, or planning applications.” (Local Government Association.)

We do not believe Coun Dormer – or Redditch Borough Council – has fulfilled these criteria.

Coun Marshall claimed this offer of conversation was made to all borough residents.

What effort was made by Coun Dormer or Redditch Borough Council to facilitate this? Were residents invited by email or letter to participate?

Were the residents of Matchborough and Ipsley contacted officially to engage in this opportunity?

How many residents availed themselves of this invitation?

Have the participants been assessed to ensure a good cross section of the Redditch population?

Is there an appropriate record which conforms to the legal GDPR requirements?

Can the council confirm all guidelines have been followed in respect of protected characteristics under the 2010 Equality Act?

What measures were taken to provide a selection of formats ensuring full accessibility for residents?

There is no mention of this consultation on the Redditch Borough Council website, so one must assume this was not a council led exercise.

If these private conversations with Coun Dormer are to be considered a consultation then it makes sense that the resulting data should be documented and presented to council as evidence of the views sought.

To fail to do this suggests a lack of transparency and openness which is in breach of the Nolan principles – “Holders of public office are accountable to the public for their decisions and actions and must submit themselves to the scrutiny necessary to ensure this.”

S Harvey, Southcrest

IN COMMON with, I expect, the vast majority of your readers, I was outraged by the behaviour of the Downing Street staff by having a party and laughing at the consequences of this government’s handling of the Covid restrictions last year.

Worse still, our Prime Minister has been in denial that such events ever happened until this week when the video evidence was published.

Rather than deal with the staff who took part, then do the decent thing and resign himself, he has asked the Cabinet Secretary to launch an enquiry to find out if anything happened.

We all know what happened, we saw it on the news!

The only people who can remove this out-of-his-depth Prime Minister from office are his fellow Tory MPs.

Why is our local MP not among the first to call for his resignation?

If he doesn’t resign then she should show leadership herself, resign from her ministerial job and give out a message that enough is enough from this clown.

It’s not funny anymore, the joke is in very bad taste, the party is over.

J Kane, Church Hill

EARLIER this year I had a friend staying with me who was from Chennai, India.

They were amazed that Redditch was allowing our beautiful green space that we walk our dogs in every day to become a cemetery.

In India burial is illegal unless on your own land with a special licence from local government.

The reason? The environment.

Embalming chemicals and toxic chemicals from rotting human remains poisons the land and the water table.

India banned it on environmental grounds some years ago.

What on earth are we doing?

Quite apart from the fact that no other sites were considered and the great crested newts at the site have been completely overlooked by a greedy and lazy council, why are we not using our crematorium and campaigning with our local citizens not to go down such an environmentally destructive route.

I am disgusted.

G Thomas, Redditch

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