FURTHER CORRESPONDENCE: RISELEY NEIGHBOURHOOD PLAN – 12th September
To: Wendy Burden
Dear Ms Burden
For the avoidance of doubt, although I became a Riseley Parish Councillor on 4 May this year, I am contacting you in my capacity as a resident of Riseley of 53 years. I also declare that I have an interest in land in Riseley for seven retirement bungalows for local Riseley people.
I came across the letter from you and the reply from Bedford Borough Council, while looking at the Borough website and not in anyway from Riseley Parish Council. It is my understanding that neither your letter nor the reply letter, have been circulated to Riseley Parish Councillors by the Clerk, nor posted on the Riseley Village website, despite you asking, in the interests of transparency,for this to be done.
With reference to your question 4 in your Examiner’s Procedural letter
- 4. To what extent were meetings of the RNPSG and RPC, including any meetings to which presentations were made by consultants or interested parties, advertised and made open to the public to attend?
And Bedford Borough Council’s response to your questions: RPC meetings are on the calendar of the RPC website and the agendas published as normal practice a week before the meeting. RNPSG meetings were not publicised
separately but the dates were decided in advance (usually 2nd Tuesday of the month) and future dates set out in the minutes:see for example
https://riseleyvillage.co.uk/riseley-neighbourhood-plan-steering-group-minutesdecember-2022 . Meetings were open to residents/interested parties.
Of the 50 or so meetings of RNPSG, since it was set up in 2018 and only after many requests, just two sets of minutes were published on the village website November and December 2022. There is then a gap until 1 July this year when after much asking another 14 sets of minutes were published. The rest of the minutes have not been published.
The regular monthly meetings of the RNPSG were held in the Village Hall. The calendar of bookings for the Village Hall is displayed on a noticeboard in the entrance
foyer. (The exception to this was during the Covid pandemic lockdown when meetings were arranged via Zoom). Many of the articles in RPC Newsletters gave
dates for the next meeting of RNPSG. Despite the dates of RNPSG meetings being available in the public domain,
there has never been a request from a member/members of the community to attend a meeting of the Steering Group, nor has there been a request for a
meeting schedule. The RNPSG email address was widely publicised in the RPC Newsletter article.
Publishing the dates of RNPSG meetings in obscure places is not “and made open to the public to attend“. I took a lot of interest in the Riseley Neighbourhood Plan, please see the attached list of my many emails to the RPC and at no point was an invitation to attend a RNPSG meeting offered to me. I was told several times if I was so concerned about the plan then I should have become a member of the RNPSG. This comment missed the point that I was member in 2018 but resigned because of conflict of interest.
The simple answer to your question 4 if you remove the reference to RPC:
To what extent were meetings of the RNPSG , including any meetings to which presentations were made by consultants or interested parties, advertised and made open to the public to attend? None absolutely none. There were no joint RPC and RNPSG meetings open to the public.
Having bland reports, read out by a third party, at RPC meetings (The Chair of RNPSG chose not to attend RPC meetings) and then publishing them in the village newsletter is not consultation.
Best regards
George Davies