It’s telling that Cllr Tom Hayes, November 19, should choose to make personal attacks on opposition councillors, in his letter ‘Disappointed by criticism of Westgate scheme’, rather than recognise that the council needs to up its game on providing more council homes.
For the record, the discussion of the Westgate at the recent scrutiny committee meeting that Cllr Hayes mentioned was only on the topic of getting improvements to public realm – pavements and benches and the like – surrounding the outside of the Westgate site.
Provision of housing was not on the agenda.
Today’s letters
That he should insinuate that opposition councillors don’t engage – with his assertion that ‘the Green chair was absent from his duties’ – is particularly low. Cllr Hayes is the vice chair of the committee and couldn’t attend the previous scrutiny meeting but I’m not about to criticise him for being ‘absent from his duties’.
The truth is that Green councillors have been challenging the Westgate plans at every stage over the poor housing provision. We’ll be challenging the plans at Oxpens too – because there is no guarantee yet that money from the Westgate developers will lead to a greater provision of genuinely affordable housing than the council’s own planning rules would normally expect.
Cllr Sam Hollick Leader, Green Group of councillors
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