Coatham Protest

Shortly after the Supreme Court ruled unanimously in our favour, the leader of Redcar and Cleveland Borough Council, George Dunning, sent a letter to a member of our group stating quite clearly that all issues regarding the aftermath of the Coatham scheme being abandoned, were going to be treated in an open and transparent manner.

Soon after this, another member of our group was invited along with a handful of others by council officer Ian Wardle, to a meeting with Mr Wardle and councillor Mark Hannon to discuss the way forward with Coatham.

I sent an email to Amanda Skelton following her disgraceful performance at a meeting of the Redcar Rotary Club, countering the false claims that she had made to the Rotary club about The Coatham Scheme, pointing out the real facts to her and asking her to call for an independent investigation into the issue of FOUR MILLION POUNDS OF PUBLIC MONEY being spent by this council on things which were the sole responsibility of Persimmon Homes PLC in trying to progress a scheme that they knew all along was unlawful and blighted with problems and controversy.

Nearly two months down the line and Mrs Skelton has not yet answered?

But as if that display of arrogant contempt wasn't bad enough, not only is the future of the meeting proposed by Ian Wardle now looking extremely precarious because he is wriggling around and fudging the issue with his secretary telling us that in approximately four weeks they been able to pin a date down for everyone to attend, or Mr Wardle is constantly in meetings, George Dunnings claim, in his letter to a member of our group that the council were going to include the public in meetings about Coatham and that they were going to adopt an open and transparent approach is more akin to absolute myth than it is Councillor Dunnings usual hot air.

Why is that? I hear you say.

Well...you only have to look at the Cabinet papers for the Cabinet meeting planned for the twenty fifth of this month to see that far from being open and transparent over the issue of Coatham Redcar and Cleveland Borough Council, even in the wake of the death of it's pet scheme, are still keeping everything regarding the 'botched', 'tainted', 'disaster' completely secret by excluding both the press and public from the cabinet meeting when the options for Coatham are discussed.

There is no scheme left, it has been abandoned, there can be nothing of any commercially sensitive nature to hide behind and yet this council are still keeping everything regarding this scheme under lock and key?

When this bunch of cowboys have WASTED approximately FOUR MILLION POUNDS of PUBLIC MONEY trying to progress this scheme on behalf of the richest builder in the country for it to end up being scrapped not only should there be an open and independent investigation, heads should roll for at least, the sheer incompetence that has led to this mess and waste of public money. And yet instead, these people think that if they say nout and just continue to try and keep everything regarding this most underhanded scheme under wraps and if they continue to treat the public of Redcar and Cleveland with sheer contempt, that everything will be ok.

I've got news for them, it isn't. Now that the election is over and the burden of having a greedy, two faced MP called Vera Baird has been lifted from the shoulders of this area and now that this Labour led council hasn't got the protection that they enjoyed whilst Baird was MP, we are going to do all that we can to expose what has happened here and the cover up that is still being purpotrated even though the scheme has been officially abandoned.

How many schemes do you know of were kept secret even though they have been abandoned?

Let investigation begin, let the unanswered questions be answered and let the guilty and those responsible for the sheer waste of FOUR MILLION POUNDS OF PUBLIC MONEY BE SACKED!