Protest threat over Bishop’s Castle biomass plant
Friday 5th November 2010, 2:58PM GMT.
Councillors in a Shropshire town have threatened to boycott a county-wide charter in protest at a decision to build a £5 million biomass plant.
Three members of Bishop’s Castle Town Council want their colleagues to have a rethink over plans to sign the Shropshire Charter – a working agreement with Shropshire Council – claiming the authority ignored local opinion on a biomass plant at the town’s business park.
Councillors had provisionally decided to sign the charter but now the issue will be discussed again at Bishop’s Castle Town Council on Tuesday evening.
The charter has been offered to all town and parish councils to improve working links with Shirehall.
Mary Holton, town councillor, said: “We’ve been constantly told by Shropshire Council and the planning committee that in future decisions will be made from the bottom up.
“Something like 10 per cent of the population of Bishop’s Castle turned up, on a week day, to say how unhappy they were about the situation. It’s pretty obvious local opinion and local feeling has been totally ignored. If they are not willing to stand by their charter themselves, I don’t see any point in us signing it.”
Councillor Steve Farr said: “We want to bring it back on the table and re-discuss it. We haven’t decided we don’t want to sign it but we had previously said we would.”
Councillor Gwilym Butler, Shropshire Council cabinet member with responsibility for partnership working, said: “There will always be times when we won’t agree on issues and the charter is all about councils working together through difficult times like this.”
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I have had experience of negotiating agreements between different levels of local authority in a different county. The reality is that they are of little value unless the more powerful partners to the agreements accept that they have to take notice of the smaller local bodies such as Parish and Town Councils.
Far too often the result is little more than cosmetic with the outcomes of discusions always reflecting the view of the more powerfull body and the less powerfull left feeling abused.
Problems also arise when politicaly ambitious Parish and Town Councillors seek to promote the interests of the senior authority in order to promote their own careers or to be associated with what they think are inevitable outcomes.
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