Meeting Delay Call rejected

The City Council is has rejected calls for the Ashwell's planning meeting to be delayed, saying:

The Council policy is to make committee reports available to the public at least five full working days before a committee and this has been done in relation to the CB1 scheme (in fact the report was published a day early on Tuesday, 7 October). I appreciate that the main report is lengthy (156 pages) but this is not unusual for a major scheme of this type. Indeed reports on matters such as the local plan tend to be lengthier. The report is structured in such a way to make it easy to locate topics so that if a member of the public has a particular concern then a topic can be readily located in the report.

The Council has made considerable efforts to allow the public to be briefed and to make representations on the CB1 scheme. A series of public meetings and Development Control Fora have been held over recent months. The report sets out all the representations made during this extended process.

In view of these considerations, I believe that the City Council has followed its own policy and set out all therelevant considerations for the Planning Committee so that a decision can be made at the scheduled meeting on 15 October.

I have the feeling this is their final word on the matter...