A conversation with my local councillor

Today I made a second trip to the Town Hall to drop off more letters from local residents who oppose the new GP surgery development.

Following that I had a long phone conversation with one of the Borough councillors for our ward.

He made it quite clear that he does not think that the Green Belt is a good enough reason to turn down the application for a new surgery - even though it will attract more patients and bring more traffic to the area.

He said that if the Council's planning officers refuse the application he would ask for it to be brought before the Planning Committee for review. But he couldn't give me any assurance that he'd do the same thing if the officers were to approve it.

He claims he has had "hundreds" of people asking him when the new surgery will be built and he told me I was the only person who objected to the plans. I suggested that in that case he might want to do what I had been doing and go and actually knock on doors and talk to the people who elected him.

He then tried telling me he had done that during the recent election campaign and had not come across a single objector. Of course we know why that is - the only contact people at our end of the village had from him during the election was when one of his helpers put a leaflet through the door saying he had tried to call and talk to us but we were out. I was actually at home at the time and saw the said leaflet being delivered.

He also told me that the busy crossroads next to the proposed site were not busy and dangerous at all - at least not compared to junctions in London. Talk about comparing apples with oranges!

Mind you, this is a man who says he was all in favour of plans a couple of years ago to turn a house on that junction into a dental surgery. That application was thrown out on the grounds that the roads couldn't cope with the extra traffic and that was for a surgery with only about seven car parking spaces, rather than the 41 proposed for the new GP surgery.

I'm off now to email the councillor copies of all the residents' letters I've got so as he can see it's not just me!