The Elms: Town council seeking legal advice over ‘defamatory statements’

ON the day when a public meeting is being hosted by the campaign group objecting to The Elms in Thame High Street being built on, Thame Town Council has defended allegations made about the council’s involvement, in a statement.

After criticising media coverage about the inclusion of The Elms site in Thame’s Neighbourhood Plan, descibing it as ‘provocative’ and designed to ‘raise the hype and produce sensational stories rather than factual articles’, the statement goes on to say that it is seeking legal advice about what it calls ‘defamatory statements’.

Despite stating that it will ‘resist taking part in the media circus’ the town council’s statement goes on to feed into the discussion by criticising the Save the Elms group and to defend how and why land at The Elms was included in the Thame Neighbourhood Plan.

Part of the statement reads: “Previous experience of communicating with the instigators of the Elms petition group have resulted in being talked at rather than listened to. Instead the Town Council will produce a fact sheet that will be issued and made available to members of the public before the Town Council meets to consider the planning application.

The rationale for The Elms to be included in the NP was:

· It was known the owner of the Elms had an intention to develop the site

· By including the site in the NP it would be part of Thame’s 775 allocation rather than an additional windfall site.

· Exactly the same consideration was given to the single site school and Park Meadow View allocations.

· Reserve sites were identified in the NP should the allocation not be achieved. The other strategic sites in the NP do not have reserve sites because they were known to be deliverable and secure development sites.

Being in the NP does not automatically mean that the site will be developed nor how many units will be built. This will all be decided through the planning process.”

Later the statement reads: “The whole neighbourhood plan process and consultation was scrutinised by the District Council and the Plan was tested again when the District Council did an independent six week consultation at the beginning of 2013. It was reviewed again by the independent examiner and subsequently by the police fraud office after claims were made by instigators of the petition group. The result was that the Plan and the process by which it was developed, met all the legal requirements of producing a neighbourhood plan including conformity with the District Council’s Local Plan and was fit to proceed to referendum.

At referendum there was opportunity again for the residents of Thame to reject the Plan if the majority of those who voted decided that the inclusion of The Elms should be rejected.

3634 people voted, close to a 40 per cent turnout, of whom 2779 (76.5%) voted in favour of adopting the Neighbourhood Plan. The reality is that everyone had some aspect of the NP they found difficult to accept or did not agree with, but the democratic vote was taken based on open and accountable information that required an understanding and an appreciation of the effect of the 775 units on all the residents of Thame.”

The full statement can be read on Thame Town Council’s website:   http://www.thametowncouncil.gov.uk

The meeting being held by the ‘Save the Elms’ group is at The Barn Centre, this evening (August 14) at 7pm for a 7.30pm start.