The present government opened with the much vaunted promise that local communities would be able to determine what people considered was in their own best interests via Neighbourhood Plans.
The people of Malmesbury drank deeply of the cup of hope in the expectation that, as stakeholders in their community, they could control their destiny. Now with the fiasco of the granting of planning approval for the Gleeson appeal, it drives a coach and horses through the concept of local control of one’s community and environment.
You might as well abolish all Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty and SSI as their abolition would help developers.
Genuine constructive local democracy died in 1974 with the Local Government Act 1972.
Andrew Woodcock, Malmesbury Town Council.
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