We are not involved Those who are opposed to a skatepark in Monkton Park and, indeed, those who are for it, might like to know the present position.

Wiltshire Council has established a project team of council officers, with some consultancy help, to prepare the planning application to be put before the Wiltshire Council planning committee. Residents in Monkton Park and St Mary’s Street, and locally elected councillors for those areas, have requested information from the project team about its progress, and have expressed a wish to be consulted about a variety of issues, including, for example, wildlife and conservation, use of the park for other regular activities and by young children, noise levels and new noise measurements, narrowing of the river pathway, to name a few of the concerns.

Alas, the requests for information, and the offers of help, have been turned down. The project team does not want any input. It wants to do its own thing and put the application for planning consent before the planning committee by December. “You will have the chance during that process”, we are told, “to make your observations”. But we also know it will be too late then for our views and our information to be properly heard and considered.

So, just as the skatepark task group, led by Councillor Hutton, operated in secrecy away from the democratic gaze, so does the project team. This is not local government and public involvement as it used to be known, and as it should be. I hope that the officers on the project team know what they are doing, and I hope the planning committee will not just act as a rubber stamp. And I do really hope that the council will, even at such a late stage, read its own publications on community involvement, and more importantly, order them to be acted upon.

Alan Gould, Chippenham.