Poole Council talk to themselves

When it comes to the use of smoke and mirrors to fool the good citizens that their council is democratic and accountable there can be no greater practitioner of these dark arts than Poole Borough Council.

I was given a lead by a comrade from the travelling community that there would be a planning meeting at the Lighthouse in Poole on 20th March in order to finalise planning permission for the establishment of a transit site in Poole for travellers and gypsies.

I attended the planning meeting but after 2.5 hours of crashing boredom couldn’t believe my ears.

Poole Council identified a piece of land near the new fire station in Creekmoor as a possible location for the transit site and duly sent their planning staff off to draw up a planning proposal.

The planners eventually came back with a planning proposal for the site and lodged it for consideration by the council.

Lets understand this. Poole council has applied to itself for planning permission.

Once the details got out and it seems that these plans weren’t easy to find there were objections and oh how the objections came.

1. Local residents objected. Course they did.

2. There are 3 local business in the vicinity of the proposed site who opposed the plan on the grounds of, amongst other things, of a health and safety threat to their staff and possible risk of crime. Once they stated their objections at the hearing they promptly threatened to pull out of Poole altogether and take their jobs with them.

3. The most powerful objection came from Joe Jones representing the travellers community. It seems this land was once a landfill site and may well be contaminated with, amongst other things, methane, lead and carbon dioxide.

I hadn’t really been part of the ongoing battle but tooled off to the Lighthouse theatre in Poole for the open meeting to avail myself of the issue.

Poole Council then proceeded to do what councils do best. Talked in jargonese so that no-one had an idea what was going on but what price the spectacle of Poole Councillors listening to submissions by their own planning staff, taking a vote on it and rejecting it.

This charade must have cost a fortune. The hire charges for the Lighthouse, salaries for the staff and councillors (probably a few expense claims bunged in for good measure) and all the rest of it.

The site itself, it emerged, would be at the side of the A35 dual carriageway with no provision for pedestrian infrastructure to allow the site users to get to local amenities, it would have had a fence round it, water supplied by a bowser and dubious facility for getting rid of waste water. In short a concentration camp.

Other conditions attached to the use of the site was a maximum stay of 28 days, no casual admittance but only admittance by referral or if travellers had been evicted from an illegal site by the police.

So there you have it. Poole Council instigate a development, process all the planning documentation and then apply to themselves for planning permission just to turn it down.

I was utterly numb at the end of it all; indeed the numbness showed no sign of wearing off so to kick start my central nervous system back to to normality I put a blow torch over my nipples and slammed my fingers in a door. I’m pleased to say normality is slowly returning.

Graham Horne

Bournemouth