Working Party Update 14.07.20

Published: 14 July 2020

Dear Residents,

It has been brought to our attention that there is “growing local distrust in the RA and working group” and we would appreciate your frank and honest views on this as I don’t think that we could have been any more open and honest in our conduct. I may be wrong!

I think that our openness has been brought out by our publishing the WP updates and also publishing sections of letters and responses that we have had, during the short tenure of this Working Party, that indicate exactly what we have been doing. There has been no mention of “growing distrust” in any correspondence that we’ve received directly from any residents, prior to an email received yesterday. Au contraire, responses have been very positive and supportive of what we’ve been doing, so this is fairly disconcerting and we need to get to the truth of the matter.

Certainly, we’ve been working hard and fast and may have skewed off course and, that being the case, we need your honest input if you feel that that’s the case.

Our paymaster for this issue is the Parish Council and it is our judge and jury. If the residents feel like this, they need to report the facts to the PC, who will review those facts and whether they influence the way in which the Working Party is operating and whether it then meets with the PC’s ethical guidelines and codes of conduct. If they do not, it is incumbent upon the PC to take appropriate action if it feels that the Working Party is operating in a biased or unethical fashion and remove personnel and/or disband the Working Party.

The Working Party has an open agenda and that is to represent the residents of the parish in a balanced and impartial way. To that end, we believe that we have involved the residents, including residents who fall just outside the parish and fall within the SMBC administrative area, in contacting us with issues that concern them and possible solutions to those issues. From that and our own researches, we have produced a sizeable matrix of the issues, possible solutions and the possible consequences of those solutions. We have then distilled this matrix down and had SDC prepare a survey on our behalf. SDC will also collate the responses and report back to us. Once we have received the full glossy report from SDC, we will publish it.

So, I am not quite sure why there is “growing distrust” in what we are doing. There are seven of us spending quite inordinate amounts of time trying to resolve these issues on behalf of the residents. Four of us are not inconvenienced by any of the ASB and little of the traffic issues that occupy the minds of so many of the residents around the Lakes. We are giving of our time and effort to resolve these issues - I was going to say “freely” but, in actual fact, we all have costs, both financially and in time invested in this project, that we’re prepared to bear to help resolve this. We can walk away and dump this problem back on the residents of Malt House Lane any time we like and it would probably have a beneficial effect on the quality of our lives. We choose not to and to see this through because we deem it important enough to be involved in, so where’s the mileage in doing things that are seen to be untrustworthy?

It is important that, if you have these feelings, you either make them known to the WP, or report them directly to the PC, in order that the PC can review them and take the appropriate action.