PRC Brief Number 3 for Mid Sussex District Councillors
Monday, 22 January 2007

Government won't take over: PRC disproves council leadership scare

The District Council Leadership in Haywards Heath is clinging to its scheme to expand East Grinstead by almost 50%. The Leadership want Councillors to ignore record protests and to ignore doubts over the scheme’s legality. To discourage any search for alternatives, they repeatedly claim that any questioning will bring the Government in, to impose its own development scheme on East Grinstead - which they say would be the same or worse.

This scare-story is completely false, according to the third TOPIC BRIEF from the East Grinstead Post Referendum Campaign. The brief (copy attached) says the law allows the Government to step in only if the Council is failing properly to carry out its planning functions. The Government cannot intervene if their only pretext is that Councillors are insisting that the law should be properly observed and objections properly weighed.

To make matters worse, the PRC says it has documentary evidence that the Council Leadership has actually urged intervention by the Government Office for the South East (GOSE). So the threat which the Leadership claims it is trying to fend off is the very threat that the Leadership itself has invited in.

The District Council Leadership’s use of scare stories to suppress dissent seems consistent with their Election strategy. Their strategy can be read in their actions : –
- to keep the lid on discussion of their East Grinstead Area Action Plan while the Election is imminent;
- after the Election to steamroller the unlawful scheme through without debate;
- to invite threats of Government intervention;
- to use those threats to quell dissent.

If that is the Council Leadership’s strategy, it underlines the importance of PRC’s TOPIC BRIEFS. Councillors who feel incensed by the secretive manipulations of their Leadership can draw their own conclusions. Voters who wonder if this is the sort of thing they intended to vote for, will have food for thought. Councillors who resent being kept in the dark by their Leadership will be better informed as the Election approaches. This will put them in a position to form their own independent views. And having done so to decide what pledges they need to make in order to secure re-election in May.

Commenting on the third TOPIC BRIEF, Tony Lane of the PRC added:

“Elected Councillors are properly concerned about an East Grinstead development scheme which seems incapable of delivery, either lawfully, affordably or environmentally. Their proper role in such a case is to expose the flaws and to explore alternatives.

“To avoid such debate the Council Leadership harp on the danger of Government intervention. Yet we now see that the Leadership have not only misrepresented this danger, but have also secretly worked to increase it. Councillors will resent this manipulation. It’s not the way to win confidence - still less the way to win re-election!”

East Grinstead Post Referendum Campaign 

For further information, call Tony Lane on 01342 323293, www.eghouses.org