Council should be clear

IF CLLR Hall is really intending to provide transparency (Hinckley Times, June 22), he has some work to do!

Information regarding the inducements for The Crescent was initially incomplete or misleading and even now Hinckley and Bosworth Borough Council will not disclose how the budget of £1,626 million was derived.

Membership of the EU was seen by some as a threat to democracy, but the concealment of information by public bodies is a far more serious threat and the Government has already declared its intention to move in that direction and local authorities will follow suit.

Transparency is abso- lute – you either have it or you don’t. As soon as you introduce exemptions you run into problems with what they should be, who decides and on what basis.

This is inevitably subjective which provides an ideal opportunity for nondisclosure. Over the fetid issue of national ID cards they came up with the mantra “you have nothing to fear if you have nothing to hide” and this applies equally to them now.

The two most commonly used get-outs are “commercial sensitivity” and disclosure “not being in the public interest” – both vague and easy to hide behind.

Applying the former to the payouts will be argued on the basis that it would push up costs, but only if the borough council lets it.

If as the borough council insists every retailer’s case is unique and individually assessed, how does what anyone else received enter the equation?

I’d argue by publicising the lowest settlements, there is a better chance to bring total costs down. Anyway, the game is rather given away by announcing there is another £400,000 in the pot up for grabs.

To be totally open you have to have complete confidence in your ability to get the best result, so I suspect the best we can hope for is a degree of translucency.

J Newman, by email