Mayor’s response challenged

DEAR Editor

The Mayor, Jeanette Matelot Green, seems to have totally misunderstood the situation re the dismissal of the CAAC. Firstly this apparently happened at the town council AGM on the 13 may and not as a request to the Grants Panel.

The CAAC is not a group which needs funding. They were set up to assist the Town Council and SODC, in January 1984, by looking at Plans in the Conservation Area. To do this they need to meet in the Town Hall as it is unlikely that they would be able to remove the plans and meet to discuss them elsewhere. The proviso of a meeting place in the Town Hall is set out in the Terms of Reference both in 1984 and again at a later date.

The meeting does not cost anything as all correspondence is by email (minutes, agendas etc) and the meetings are made when the cleaner is in the building, so that no one has to be employed to unlock or lock up the building. The point of the group is to discuss the plans together and come to an agreed recommendation as a whole and not as individuals thus using a corporate knowledge of the towns buildings and their history. Whilst the Mayor and Chair of Planning may have building expertise they have not had the length of time and intimate knowledge of the Listed Buildings in the Town that the members of CAAC have.

Once we agree that the Mayor is talking about the wrong meeting, the wrong issue ie funding and that the Town Clerk was at the meeting on the 13 May the whole of her letter becomes totally invalid and misleading.

I still suggest that CAAC are reinstated.

Ron Clanfield
Thame