Sadly, this week (ended 21st September 2007), around Exmoor and in Minehead and the West Somerset District, many people are saying that there is still a lack of policy vision in West Somerset District Council.
Furthermore, locals appear astounded that the hugely unpopular Tory policies of selling off Minehead’s Vulcan Road car park area for supermarket development may yet still prevail.
It is widely believed that it was these policies that caused the West Somerset electorate to decisively kick out the Conservative Party and install a new majority of Independant Councillors in the May 2007 local elections.
This followed months of petitions, demonstrations and speeches at public meetings which had made it abundantly clear that many of the West Somerset public believed Exmoor and West Somerset had many urgent needs and additional supermarkets in Minehead were not amongst them.
Yet reports in the West Somerset Free Press (September 14th and 21st) now suggest that Exmoor and West Somerset may still have this unpopular Tory supermarket policy foisted upon them.
Some say it’s because of a Tory Councillor signing a key document two days before they were kicked out.
Others suggest that the incoming Independant Councillors were outmanouvered by the more experienced minority Tories when Tory Councillors unexpectedly parachuted in additional Councillors for a key vote which stopped the Independants altering the public plan.
Whatever the truth, it is crystal clear that feelings are again running high in Exmoor and West Somerset about the apparent reinstatement of these hugely unpopular Conservative Party policies.
As a last ditch defence, it appears that the Independant Councillors are now requiring a consultation with the public to finally decide the fate of Vulcan Road and are proposing a ‘do nothing although it will cost us’ option in addition to the various supermarket ones.
But, sadly, West Somerset consultation systems are still in the Dark Ages with no public facility to debate policy other than the weekly local press (much loved as it is).
Previous Local Government surveys have been widely criticised as being fundamentally flawed.
Local Government Consultation systems in Exmoor and West Somerset are still unidirectional, hierarchical and lack the transparency of public audit. They assume that, once elected, Councillors and Local Governmnent bureaucrats will have all the answers.
Few, in the towns and villages of Exmoor and West Somerset, would agree with this view, I suspect.
Exmoor and West Somerset still has huge problems centred around an economy that has seen little regeneration over many decades.
Without a thriving economy delivering well paid jobs, the Exmoor and West Somerset infrastructure will remain as it has been for decades … beautiful but depressed.
Genuine Internet based online public forums would enable a forensic debate about this Exmoor and West Somerset policy and many other pressing West Somerset and Exmoor needs.
An open to all and visible to all public Internet debating forum would enable the minds of all the best thinkers in the District to focus on the the key policy issues that face West Somerset and Exmoor.
If the ‘best thinkers’ in Exmoor and West Somerset, or even Councillors, don’t know how to use the Internet as was suggested to me yesterday by one Councillor, I’m sure that there are many of us who will be willing to help them.
Perhaps this would finally enable the people of Exmoor and West Somerset to get our wonderful rural area on the move.
At least, if the electorate of Exmoor and West Somerset then failed to find solutions, everybody would know they had rationally and publicly explored all possibilities.
Leader of the Council, Cllr Keith Ross, and the other Independant Councillors should require the West Somerset Council bureacrats to institute these online public forums immediately.
If the Local Government Officers prevaricate, I’m sure there are local people who would be willing to set up Exmoor and West Somerset online public forums free of charge (probably myself included). (Indeed, at least two attempts have already been made to set up these forums but they received no official Local Government support or publicity so they both fell by the wayside.)
I, for one, and I suspect many others in Exmoor and West Somerset have had enough of living in the Dark Ages.
Let’s make Exmoor and West Somerset a proud model of community involvement that all other areas will want to follow.
All comments are welcomed below including any from Councillors or Officers in Exmoor and West Somerset.
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