Sir – May I respond to last week’s letter by Labour’s chairman of the west area planning committee, Mr Oscar Van Nooijen?
He accused me of being “hot and bothered”, “inaccurate”, “ill-informed”, and “inhabiting a parallel universe” in urging the council planning committee not to deal with the St Clements car park development along party political lines.
I’m a resident of St Clements with no political motivation. The St Clements planning application has been soundly rejected twice. However, immediately and with the slimmest of majorities, chairman Van Nooijen’s planning committee recalled the proposal for a third consideration, which experts tell me means it could eventually be granted. Another Labour councillor wrote to me that “the rush is because the city council needs the money and the universities need more student accommodation”. All this in the face of a solid wall of opposition from St Clements inhabitants.
Labour’s Bev Clack defeated the Green Party’s St Clements hegemony by claiming that small political parties have no leverage and so are unable to influence decisions in favour of local people. (At least that’s what she told me on my doorstep when recommending herself over the ward’s hitherto Green Party incumbents). We hope she will employ this leverage very soon.
Until then, St Clements is indeed a “parallel universe”, or as I said in my first letter: “the sole preserve of the Green Party”; with our views and the city’s long-term needs (highways, heritage, environment and local homes: jobs: student accommodation ratio) apparently discounted against the short-term need of the council’s Labour majority to sell the land in order to avoid cutting services or increase rates.
Hugh McManners, St Clements