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What happened to standing up for what you believe in?
• I WAS in the public gallery last Thursday during the meeting of the Development Control Committee. The main business was the consideration by the new committee (new since the election) of the outline planning applications for the King’s Cross site.
It could have been a re-consideration, especially as significant questions had come up as to whether an outline application was appropriate.
But it was regarded by the officers, and the developers, just to be a confirmation.
I rarely go to council meetings, and there are people better informed than me. But I was astonished by the spinelessness of most of the council members. I was left with the strong impression that the council is run, and its decisions are effectively made, by its officers and legal advisers, more than by our elected representatives.
In the course of the discussion, council members accepted, with the flimsiest of scrutiny or consideration, legal opinion which was not even fully documented but was reported by an officer, when on the same issues conflicting legal advice had been given – we all know how lawyers can disagree.
Members accepted aspirations from a representative of the developer which I thought could only be characterised as high-flown and rhetorical; which were not embodied in any contractual way; which were not in keeping with the council’s own figures; and which were way out of keeping with those in the carefully documented opposing deposition from the King’s Cross Railway Lands Group.
It became clear (it was stated by a member as a regretted fact) that there had not previously been any solid or meaningful working contact between members and the developer, nor, even more serious, between members and the council’s own officers.
It was shameful to see local government conducted in such a fashion. I now understand why you are so often moved to criticise the council – thank goodness at least for a free local press that draws attention to some of its failings.
I understand why so few people vote.
What is needed is a fundamental, and hard, kick up the pants which re-organises and restructures the relationship between elected representatives and officers: and which provokes the members into taking a stand.
In an earlier agenda item, concerning a much smaller planning application, I was astonished to hear one councillor say he sympathised with the substance of an opposing deposition and supported it, but that he feared an objection would be overturned on appeal and therefore he would vote for the application.
Well, I know that councils are bound by the law, as we all are; and I know that legal processes cost money; as also do construction delays. But has anyone heard of standing up for what one believes? No democratic process will work unless people do that.
THOM OSBORN
Brecknock Road, N7
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