Councillor Peter Steen

Conservative group leader

IT was 6.30pm on Monday 23rd December, we were in the Council Chamber for the delayed December Council Meeting, 29.5 hours before Christmas Day, but Peace and Goodwill to all persons was in short supply, replaced by Humbug, Hypocrisy and apparent chaos.

The first major item on the agenda was the District Forward Plan.

A large number of residents from the Sharneyford area were in attendance to ask questions and voice their objections to the siting of a Traveller site at the quarry above their properties.

To each of the eleven hostile questions the Leader of the Council stated there was no other suitable site, whilst this area would be listed in the Forward Plan to be resubmitted to the Inspectors.

There was no intention of compulsory purchase of the site, despite being shown in point 5.15 of the report and the Council had no intention of developing the site.

I wonder what the Inspectors will think of that?

(Hypocrisy).

At the end of public question time I rose to question the suitability and viability of the site and what other locations had been considered?

The leader responded that other sites had been looked at, but the locations were confidential.

She also stated that Councillors had been invited to view the Sharneyford site, such a pity myself and my Greensclough Ward Councillor colleague weren’t invited.

The leader also stated that all these matters had been agreed in all party consultations (I await, in hope more than expectation for dates and detailed minutes) therefore I was simply playing politics for public consumption.

I thought that was the responsibility of the opposition to hold the administration to account in public.

Or am I with the majority in Rossendale, who, in the words of a Labour Councillor, on a public Social Media site, are “Too Stupid to Understand”?

(Humbug)

At the end of the report we were asked to approve the extension of the Forward Plan as the Inspectors had rejected it.

Furthermore, we were asked to approve the withdrawal from reserves of £125k to pay consultants to complete it, despite spending many months of preparation and public consultation.

(Chaos).

The evening summed up this administration, clueless, leaderless and willing to squander the Council Tax payers’ hard earned money.