No ID and no idea of proper public service

I attended the CALA Homes display in the Library this week and spoke with their knowledgeable technical team.

It was a good opportunity to discuss the range of harm their golf club development will cause.

To their credit they were engaged and listening throughout.

The council admitted in recent papers that it is already failing to meet the scientific ‘Tyndall trajectory’ curve for preventing climate change.

CALA confirmed that their homes will not be net neutral in the short term.

They will therefore add to the climate emergency as they are built.

They couldn't confirm the number of trees that they would be felling at the golf course.

They did try and assure me that they would protect Rushington Copse and three other veteran trees, and would be replacing the large number of lost trees with new planting.

I asked them how the carbon capture of hundreds of large and mature trees could be offset by mere new saplings, and how long these saplings would take to grow.

They did not appear to have thought through this net climate change impact, but every member of the public that I saw raised the issue of trees and climate change.

CALA had a number of experts on hand who were open and transparent about who they represented.

The council, however, was less open, and was in fact covertly monitoring the event.

I was chatting to CALA representatives who were wearing clear name badges, but there was one person in the group who was not wearing a badge.

I asked him to identify himself three times.

On the third time of asking he said ‘I work for the property company’.

‘Do you mean the RBWM property company?’ I asked.

Yes, he said, still refusing to give me his name.

It is outrageous that the council's property company officers are acting as quasi-minders for third parties’ meetings and are even refusing to identify themselves to residents.

What exactly have these public servants got to hide?

CALA and its parent company, Legal and General, may wish to seriously reflect on their corporate association with this paranoid and anti-scrutiny culture.

The business plan for the RBWM property company was recently moved into the confidential sections of council meetings, so residents cannot be sure what its true purpose now is.

All we know for certain is that the company is losing residents tens of millions of pounds – for example, the Advertiser recently exposed the catastrophic losses in the Magnet deal.

Legal and General/CALA Homes clearly have the skill and talent to redevelop brownfield sites and existing buildings.

I hope very much they will soon recognise

that the harmful development of the golf course was and is an error of judgment.

There is money to be made by CALA in our town, and many genuinely affordable homes still to be built, but they must be in the right places and by mutual consent.

The golf course is self-evidently the wrong place.

This is obvious to all but a tiny handful of climate sceptics clinging on in the town hall.

Rich or poor, developer or non-developer, none of our families can live our best lives without clean lungs, cool towns, and a vibrant ecology, can we?

ANDREW HILL Rutland Gate Maidenhead