Comments from Dale Heenan

Dale Heenan has posted the following comments to ORA and he and Emma Faramarzi continue to tweet and post on Facebook about ORA. We welcome this effort from local politicians who are desperate to improve their readership to the extent that they are driving more web traffic to the ORA blog and improving our readership statistics.

ORA are now part of the interweb political conversation taking place in Swindon and this has been picked up on www.talkswindon.org. Geoff Reid is not one to miss an opportunity to expose and scrutinise the actions of the councillors at Swindon Borough Council.

The ORA secretary suggested a series of questions that ORA members might wish to ask:

Does keeping the S.106 agreement for highways generic and high level mean that the money will be spent Borough-wide as in the Haydon 3 agreement?
Is there a danger that the money will never benefit the residents of Priory Vale?
What does the Community Centre or Pub at Redhouse Village Centre have to do with the application at Tadpole Farm?
Did the Planning Officer make it clear that this issue was not material to the Tadpole Farm application?
Would the Cabinet Member for Planning know this?
If he did, then why did he mention something that was not a material planning consideration for Tadpole Farm?
As Chair of the Planning Committee did Cllr Heenan ever ask members of the public to keep to material planning considerations only when discussing applications?

We received some comments from Dale Heenan:

"As the Secretary to ORA you're certainly welcome to ask me these questions directly."

Why would ORA do that?  We answer to the membership of ORA not to Dale Heenan.

He then writes:

“S.106 is a legal contract negotiated between solicitors; S.106 contributions normally have to be quite specific so the money is only spent on that item.
For example, £100,000 for crossings on a specific road. If in 10 years time the road improvement which is needed is not a crossing but something else, the £100,000 cannot legally be spent. If the £100,000 was instead for "road and transport improvements in Oakhurst" then it allows the Council much more latitude. The Iffley/Purton road is the classic example which required a renegotiation with the developer, otherwise the money would be have to be returned to the developer with interest."

Dale then asks:

“I trust ORA agrees with my point that such a change is necessary and a good thing.”

Why would anyone condone what the current administration has done by spending close to 90% of the millions of pounds of North Swindon Developer S.106 contributions across Swindon?  He must be having a laugh if he thinks that ORA and residents in North Swindon will give him a blank cheque to do so in the future. 

Dale speaks of being confused and a little muddled.  It is not for the secretary of ORA to comment on Dale's well being.  Dale and his fellow councillors can pour out all the political spin and propaganda they wish. ORA will continue to scrutinise and publish what they actually say and what they actually do.

Holding politicians to account who say, post or tweet their own words is not a problem for ORA. If that is a problem for the politicians who would prefer to operate in the Quill Pen world of the Council then so be it because once trust is broken councillors will find it as difficult to win back as putting toothpaste back into the tube.

As they say daylight is the best disinfectant.  However, forcing spinning politicians into the daylight is not the aim of ORA’s blogging.  It is a consequence of their own words and actions.