Resident’s questions for Councillor over Elms development

DEAR EDITOR, Mike Dyer’s diatribe in the local press last week once again asserts that the Town Plan was put together by the people of Thame who voted for its adoption at a referendum.

Certainly people were consulted and residents’ views were taken into consideration, but competing and conflicting points of view from a number of residents groups and local organisations had to be ironed out. These are the words of Jake Collinge, Planning Consultant to the Council.

This ‘ironing out’ was done by a working group lead by Cllrs Dyer, Bretherton and Lambert who, in public statements, constantly made it clear whether they were wearing their Councillor or Plan Working Group hats at the time.

Cllr Dyer asserts that the referendum was entirely legitimate but fails to explain, first, why people were not told in the circular that went to all households where the 775 houses would be built and second, why people were told that there was “no point in voting NO, because 775 houses were coming anyway.” The number of houses was never the issue. The plan’s purpose was not to decide the number. It was to decide WHERE the houses allocated to Thame would be built.

Cllr Dyer has a strange inability to see this, or to accept that a large number of people who voted YES, as instructed, have since realised that they were mislead and have signed the petition against development in Elms Field. One has to wonder about Cllr Dyer and his cohorts, one of whom has wrongly accused the previous owner of the Elms from profiting from the Elms development scheme (and failed both to apologise or to redirect his accusation). Have they visited the SODC planning website and logged in to application P14/S2176/FUL and seen the number of objections registered there? It is probably a record for South Oxfordshire.

It is also notable that Cllr Dyer has nothing to say in response to the accusation that Councillors, at the meeting which passed the Plan for referendum, were not shown an important letter from English Heritage on the subject of development on Elms Field. They were told, falsely, that the letter was received “…late, three weeks after the closing of the public consultation period.” The letter was not written as part of the consultation period. It was written within a week of a site meeting with the developer’s planning consultants, and rejected the site assessment presented by those consultants. Who gave this false information to the assembled Councillors and who thus witheld the letter? Will Cllr Dyer say it wasn’t him? Will he identify who was responsible? The minutes do not say.

Maybe Cllr Dyer would like to clarify the issue of the other false statements made to Councillors at that meeting. These concern the nonsense about “ensuring viability”, the increase in number from 35 to 45: “…after further consideration” – consideration by whom? Also the nonsense that “feedback from the community” and the English Heritage letter had caused the increase. Also how 35 was in the plan in the first place?

Cllr Dyer asserts that no “mistake” was made. If it wasn’t a mistake and if there is no proper rejection of the points raised in the above questions, then what are we left with?

Peter Webb
Thame
Save The Elms group