Arborfield Garrison -Residents Action Group (AG-RAG) chairman, Martin Rutter, has expressed his anger and disgust at Wokingham Borough Councils failure to carry out ‘thorough and meaningful’ consultation with thousands of residents who will be affected by plans to build a 3,500 mini town in Arborfield.
A Council Planning Officer has confirmed to the Group it will not be making any direct contact with local residents to inform them the consultation is taking place and have said people will have to find out the information themselves.
Martin says. ‘This is absolutely outrageous. The Council are making it incredibly hard for people to have their say. They have said that only those who made previous comments about the plans will be written to. Well, we are aware that many of our members, who wrote letters objecting to the original proposals, are still waiting to hear from the Council, so they are even failing to fulfil this promise. It is only through AG RAG’s banners, posters, website and newsletter that people are aware the consultation is taking place at all and time is running out to comment.’
He adds. ‘The Council has already faced a legal challenge over their failure to consult properly and it is blatantly clear that they have not learned any lessons from this. Furthermore, this is before they actually start considering any of the comments and objections from residents which they totally disregarded first time around’.
Martin concludes.’ We are convinced Wokingham Borough Council are making a mockery of the whole process and their failure to carry out a thorough consultation exercise is simply because they do not want to hear the truth about people’s outrage and vehement opposition against their badly thought out and unwanted proposals’.
