Looks lovely. When are town planners going to give us something good to look at?

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I would like to express my complete disgust with T&W’s so called public consultation on the Dawley Regeneration plan. I believe that the current plans which have been purposely kept from the public were actually the intended plans from the start and that the consultation process (as always with T&W projects) has been a public relations sham.

As of writing I have been unable to find any up-to-date details in relation to your report on the T&W website (no surprise there) only the previously updated plans from December. Viewing those plans does beg the question why have so many trees been felled before planning permission has been granted and why have mature trees been felled in nearly all locations of the plans where trees are shown to remain?

If any proof is needed of T&W’s real agenda, last December those considerably revised plans were displayed for 4 hours at the parish council offices with virtually no advance publicity whatsoever. The Dawley Regeneration Partnership expressed concern themselves about the lack of publicity for the consultation of the updated plans with their secretary claiming in the minutes of their Jan 11th Meeting that she hadn’t even been informed!

The original mock ups that were published of an extended high street featuring a gym, cafe’s etc have now mysteriously all disappeared to be replaced with a New Phoenix School and its related leisure facilities. Of course the obvious name for the new school would of course be the ‘Matthew Webb’ but ironically a swimming pool has been omitted from the plans (sound familiar?) making this unlikely.

There has also apparently still been no decision on the future of the historic Lord Hill pub which was originally purchased to allow road widening (which also now seems absent from Novembers updated plans?) – Yet the pub has ominously been described in the December ‘s plans as ‘derelict’, (perhaps that is because the Council closed it down?). Of the four options proposed for the Lord Hill three involve complete or virtual demolition. Something tells me that the reason the decision on the Lord Hill’s fate hasn’t been made public whereas the rest of the scheme is as good as signed off is because the decision has already been secretly made, but the Council know it will be controversial?

The mention in this report of a giant foodstore has really left me scratching my head as in the updated November plans the size of the foodstore has actually been reduced to dimensions equivalent to the existing CO-OP (hardly Giant?)

The ongoing saga of the designated nature reserve between Oxford Road and Crown Street is nothing short of comical and the amounts that have been spent over the years re-re-re-landscaping this area only for it to effectively become a housing estate is nothing short of scandalous.

As for Cllr Tonks comment – I’m sure that you do think “This should massively improve the whole area of Dawley” as I’m guessing that you are the only one fully aware of the Councils plans – and while you may think you are doing the right thing for Dawley how about really letting the Dawley public have their say?

I did email the editor of the Shropshire Star (3.3.10) expressing my dissatisfaction about the consultation procedure and the changes that had been made. The Shropshire Star’s coverage of the Dawley regeneration plans has been pitiful, and the decision not to publish my ‘letter to the editor’ just about sums up my thoughts about the effectiveness of your rag as a reliable local source of news.

My message to the Shropshire Star – if you want to regain your credibility try growing some b*lls and ask some difficult questions of our local council instead of just being their mouthpiece!

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Cut them some slack, you professional moaners. It looks far better than the dump that it is now thanks to years of neglect.

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Unfortunately its a reality that public consultation is pretty much lip service on schemes such as these. The exercise from the authorities perspective is often to convince and justify to the public that the pre decided proposal is what they want rather than it being the other way round. This however is the only way to get these schemes delivered within budget and on time. If there is too much public input into these schemes the delivery can get bogged down with things such as unrealistic expectations, the need to satisfy everybody to the n’th degree and no public understanding of scheme restraints such as land avialability, planning law and financial viability.

To much public input and I can assure you alot of these projects would never get off the ground. It has to be done this way.

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I went to the original consultation meeting and queried the amount of houses then . In my opinion the only way they are going to get that many houses on that site with all the other “benefits” is to build another woodside/sutton hill along with it’s now demolished three tier/storey flats etc, which let’s face, it was the downside of woodside. Do people of Dawley really want this?

At the meeting no-one could deny me that there were going to be these type of flats built, with the phrase, “nothing’s been finally decided yet”, being bandied about. (Although the model suggested this to me)

We all remember the sixties original “Dawley New Town” plans, with the fantastic artists impressions of what the “new town” would look like….it didn’t happen then and I’m expecting a disaster now, to be quite honest.

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ASIF said:

“anything there is welcomed”

…be careful what you wish for – you might get it!!

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I wonder whos going to make loads with this then ?

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