SAVE Our Cirencester (SOC) should have realised that something was up when, after an ordinary Cotswold District Council (CDC) meeting in April, we found that the cabinet had held a prior covert meeting to progress the Local Plan. 

We made sure that we attended the most recent full council meeting expecting it to be an opportunity to pose some questions.

However, despite there being no prior indication of the importance of the meeting, the full council to all intents and purposes passed the local plan there and then.

The Standard reported that the council had followed the cabinet’s recommendation and passed the Local Plan subject only to no significant issues being raised.

The council must think that they are home and dry with submission to the government now being a formality.

This is made more annoying by its claims that it has properly engaged in community consultation. 

Perhaps this deficiency has something to do with a voting inclination on the Local Plan that went almost entirely according to where councillors live and which party they represent. 

If ever there was any doubt that CDC is on a box-ticking exercise it was confirmed by the way it has treated the public’s comments.

We were lead to believe that our comments and concerns were best made through CDC’s consultation portal.

Many hundreds of people battled with a difficult to use online system to express their views. 

People expected a response from CDC but nothing had been forthcoming.

Until last week when SOC fortuitously caught sight of a document prepared for the cabinet, a small ruling elite of five led by council leader, Lynden Stowe. 

The totality of what local people had to say about the unloved local plan had been reduced, diminished, glossed over, and misrepresented to merely half a dozen pages of double spaced paper. 

What was left was a misrepresentation that the cabinet and the full council could nod through without any doubts bothering them. 

The huge development at Chesterton was curtly dealt with on less than one page and reads as though it is all wine and roses rather than the planning disaster that nearly everyone in Cirencester believes it will be.

CDC must be prepared to accept that their closet governance and lack of judgement is wrong.

SOC will continue its efforts to see how this monumental mistake can be avoided. 

New homes are needed but not so many, and all in just one place.

PATRICK MOYLAN
Save Our Cirencester