Should Newbury Town Council gain powers?
I READ the online reports about the refusal of West Berkshire Council to pedestrianise Newbury town centre with interest.
Both Newbury Town Council and Newbury Business Improvement District allowed a time for deliveries so that providers can stock their shops, so it wasn’t a total ban – but would allow a café culture in the summer evenings and a safer environment both from pollution and traffic.
It was a proposition unanimously backed by all councillors from Newbury and 80 per cent of the businesses.
The people refusing were West Berkshire councillors.
If we look at WBC’s handling of affairs in Newbury, such as the flooding from the Northbrook stream, its obsession with the LRIE (which of course is near the town centre), its blatant and deliberate ignoring of the rules regarding football pitches, the crazy levels of debt it wants to accumulate, a pattern emerges of a refusal to listen to regulations, requests or indeed democratic questioning whether by legitimate pressure groups or by councillors representing the 55 per cent of voters who didn’t vote for one party.
All orchestrated by councillors who live many miles from Newbury.
Many of the councillors voting against pedestrianisation, ignoring the rules on community assets, the repeated flooding and the National Policy Planning Framework don’t live anywhere near Newbury, coming from places like Tilehurst and Pangbourne, which are more or less suburbs of Reading.
Isn’t it time that Newbury Town Council had powers over Newbury and citizens of Reading stopped voting on matters concerning Newbury? Simple solution – vote for the
Newbury MP, vote for the Newbury council, vote for Reading MP vote for Reading councillor.
Is it time to end this decaying and doddery West Berkshire Council with its elderly and unhearing councillors obsessing about the LRIE and let the people of Newbury and district have a proper council with powers to regulate their planning, shopping and football pitches?
Maybe we could call it NE-EXIT?
IAN HALL
Ashampstead