Whilst we acknowledge that our public meet was called at short notice this is because Essential Livings amended scheme was only made available to a small number of the community at the BCC meeting on Monday, March 13 and latterly to the wider community on Tuesday, March 14 with a deadline to submit comments within 14 days – Monday, March 27. On top of this the letter of notification of application from RED and Development Management clearly stated ‘Hard copies of this application will not be kept at the Civic Centre, or your local library.’, in complete contradiction of what Mr Bellinger of EL said at the BCC meet, and clearly not much use to those without internet access. In addition the same letter of notification also stated ‘Objections made on previous applications will not be taken into account.’ we have since been informed that this is NOT the case and all previous objections stand. We asked Essential Living if their amended scheme could be made available to the wider public and received no response, we then asked EL why the plans were not available either at the Civic Centre, or the local library they clarified this with the case officer who said ‘it had been a mistake’, however we were only informed of this on Friday, March 17. We do understand the IBAF meeting has been diarised for some time, but surely does it really need all six of Brentford and Syon ward elected Councillors to attend? Whilst the Church St closure is of importance this issue has been going on for some time now, whereas the Morrison site development which has far reaching consequences appears to have been dealt with undue haste from the original consultation period to where we are now AND is no less a ‘thorny’ subject particularly to the 23,000 users a week of Morrisons.
Martin Case ● 3064d