Today our group received an anonymous threat to the fair running of the consultation process for the planning application.
A developer is someone who wants to build houses in the countryside. Conservationists say NO! NO! NO!
What is a conservationist? Someone who owns a house in the countryside.
Drove through your village at the weekend. I wept when I thought of all the beautiful green space which was cleared to make way for your big houses. I think it is time the government started clearing villages like yours and returning the spaces to nature. You can be compensated at the value of farmland without planning permission – let’s say 2-3,000 an acre? That should pay for four months rent of a BTL microflat by the M3 at Junction 4a.
Worried about traffic you say? Hmm, there were an awful lot of cares parked in drives when I went through the place. Best you all switch to bicycles if you are so worried about pollution and noise.
By the way, me and a few friends have just started a discrete action group to get people on the internet to email and write to WBC in support of this development plan. Wr’ve done it before – a few dozen students disrupted a similar local action group in a Sussex town of 10,000 who tried to block the building of a few hundred houses. Thanks in advance for giving up your information to the electoral record, residents, it will come in much use – as will your lists of people to contact.
Due to the way consultations are carried out, the process is open to abuse. As the threat highlights unless people have expressly asked to be removed from the public version, the electoral register is a public document and is available to search online, so it is easy for people to retrieve the names and addresses of a number of local people and write fake letters from them to submit them to the process. For example responses in support of a controversial Tesco store in Leeds were found to be forged, and the threat highlights similar action they claim to have carried out on a controversial development in Sussex.
As such we are calling on Wokingham Borough Council to ensure that the consultation process for this important planning application is conducted in a way that is fair to all local residents and to the applicants by properly validating all replies to ensure that they are genuine.
We have released the following press statement, and will be formally contacting senior officers at Wokingham Borough Council to ask them to take the necessary actions. In the mean time if you have not yet submitted your comments, it is even more important that you make representation to the council, instructions on how to submit your comments can be found here.
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