Coatham Protest

Here is the part of the High Court Judges exact verdict, that the council are trying to sweep under the carpet. And I quote…

“In the result, the claimant succeeds on his 1st ground. In my judgement, the councils decision to grant planning permission for the project was UNLAWFUL by reason of apparent BIAS and apparent PRE-DETERMINATION. Planning permission should be quashed on that ground”.

There are seventeen pages of his verdict. Holding the meeting during Purdah, the thing that the council are trying to make most play of, was just a part of the complex case. There are two things that need to be said here.

Firstly, after sending George Dunning an email pointing this out to him and pointing out that the major reason for the planning process being unlawful was bias and pre-determination, he replied, not only ignoring this point, but still quoting the issue of Purdah and still maintaining that both he and the council and the MP, had not seen the judges final verdict? If we have received the final verdict then it is impossible to believe that the council has not. They are desperately trying to ignore the major issue of bias and pre-determination as the main reasons for the whole process being unlawful, in order to try and just carry on regardless.

This belief has been enforced today. The same person who sent Mr Dunning the letter, today went to the Coatham Bowl. He was told by the duty officer, that the Coatham Bowl and Leisure centre are still going to be closed on March 31st this year. Dancers will be made to go to the education centre (old Salt Scar school) on Corporation Rd and a temporary gym will be set up on the racecourse.

THIS IS AN ABSOLUTE DISGRACE.

They have no planning permission for anything, yet they are still carrying on as though they have. They are closing down our leisure centre and only concert/dance venue when they haven’t got planning permission to build anything in its place and wont have for a long time. This is an act of spite. They are trying to force the people of this town to just accept this flawed, unlawful, underfunded scheme, even though they have no planning permission for it because it was found to be unlawful, even though they have no funding for it and even though the whole scheme is dead in the water. In closing the Bowl and Leisure centre and offering not even a sub-standard replacement, they are trying to make people accept their plan.

It is about time that instead of displaying such arrogance, they showed a bit more humility in light of being found to have had an unlawful, biased and pre-determined planning permission quashed in the High Court.

I urge every last person in this borough to fight them and their arrogance and their utter contempt for the public within this borough. They have no planning permission because of their bias and pre-determination. Because this scheme has been given cross party backing in the council chamber they are unlikely to get planning permission, because planning committees have to unbiased and independent and this council cant provide an unbiased planning committee, so this scheme is dead in the water. Yet despite this, they want to close and demolish our last leisure facility in order to try and get the public to simply accept this dead scheme.
They have to be stopped now. They are the ones who have been found to have been unlawful. They are the ones who are guilty. It is they that should be penalized, NOT THE PEOPLE OF THIS TOWN!