A Proper Panto !
A huge thank you to Santa for his latest present, a huge haul of documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act. Our team are ploughing through the pages (and consuming mince pies by the kilo).
Some information has again been withheld by the council, citing “Regulation 12(5)(E) Information considered commercially sensitive” and “Regulation 12(5)(b) Information supplied in the course of justice or enquiries”. All on the advice of Legal Services (booooo), who seem to be playing an increasingly large part in this panto (as the principal villain).
Legal Services (boooo) are clearly now deciding what the public can be told, which hardly reflects the councils core values of “accountability and trust”. Hiding behind legal privilege is unlikely to promote public confidence. We may request a review of the withheld information and then escalate it to the Information Commissioner’s Office. We consider the withheld information to be very much in the public interest. All together now boys and girls:
oh yes it is
We’ve always suspected that the council issued an edict to prevent elected councillors from responding to our email of 4th of November 2020 (read it here), and now have proof that they did. Democratic Services sent round an email asking councillors not to respond to us until they had spoken to Town Planning.
Are the councillors unable to form their own opinion, and draft a response ? God forbid , they might agree with us.
Why are council officers interfering with the work of elected councillors ?
We now have evidence of a briefing statement sent to councillors and officers, that they could just copy and paste (with additional instructions not to deviate from the facts in this sensitive issue). This just smacks of laziness and certain degree of contempt to our (your) genuine concerns. In fact it’s still being copied and pasted into nearly every response we receive from the council.
A recent reply from Town Planning completely disregarded all of the questions we asked below, instead choosing to simply copy and paste the same old script yet again.
What part of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 you are using to permit the use of the premises for F1(f) Public worship or religious instruction (or in connection with such use).
Please confirm and quantify what you consider “increased use”, in terms of;
a) Number of prayer sessions and/or religious instruction/education (per week)
b) Number of people attending for each prayer session / religious instruction
c) Additional rooms being usedHow will the Planning Department monitor the current use with regards to assessing “increased use” for worship related activities, until such time a planning application is submitted?
If a change in the current use is reported, will it be investigated?
What enforcement process will you use to investigate?
How will you monitor events where larger attendance is likely, for example Eid and Ramadan, if no planning application has been submitted by that time?
Will you be allowing any further amendments to the current use that you deem as being permitted without requiring a formal planning application?
Perhaps if Town Planning are unable to answer, maybe someone from Connected Chelmsford could produce another briefing statement for officers to copy and paste. We should warn that a failure to respond will result in our team escalating this request to the next level. All together now boys and girls:
Oh yes we will
The council’s handling of the whole issue surrounding Hamptons has been poor. Town Planning owe residents and the Chelmsford Muslim Society a public apology for the confusion they have created. A number of councillors shared our concerns about this sudden change of position. All together now boys and girls:
oh yes they do !
One final absolute gem we obtained from the documents is the recounting of an incident outside Hamptons (by a councillor). When asked by a resident if the worshippers had planning permission to use Hamptons as a Place of Worship, the shouted response by a worshipper was “we do not spend 2.25 million quid on it not to be a Mosque''. All together now boys and girls: