| Topic: | Labour to unravel the mystery? | |
| Posted by: | Steve Taylor | |
| Date/Time: | 10/09/10 15:59:00 |
| After speaking to some residents who attended the Mogden meeting on Wednesday together with cross party Cllrs I was astounded to hear that Tory Cllr Brad Fisher blew a gasket at hearing my question asked of Thames Water which referred to the minutes of the June meeting. At the June meeting a resident Environmental Health Officer simply stated that, as the last improvement program had failed, and as Thames had not spend the full £46 million as allocated by Ofwat from ratepayers bills, could the Thames director confirm how much was actually spent and why didn't they spend whole allocation lot to do the job properly. The Thames director said that he didn’t have the figures to hand but not all of the 46 million had been spent, and any surplus would have gone back to customers in lower bills. That in itself is a strange answer as one would have thought the director responsible for Mogden liaison, chairing these meetings, who also happened to steer the Expansion Planning Application through the Council, should have these figures at his fingertips especially as this issue was the subject of much questioning in the High Court of Justice. Therefore three months later I put the question in reference to the June minutes " Can Thames Water now confirm that only £30 million of the allocated £46 Million was spent on odour and do Thames Water and Cllrs believe it was negligent of Thames to divert the unspent money to other areas when it could have been used to increase the Ofwat regulatory output minimum from 60% to 80 or even 90%?" Now obviously something about this open and honest question caused Cllr Fisher extreme discomfort as he allegedly blew a gasket and stated that I had already been provided an answer in a meeting I had with him and the then Tory Leader Peter Thompson in April 2010. This is astounding. Firstly - Cllr Fisher knew the answer so why didn't he provide it to the previous meeting in June and perhaps jog the Thames Water director's memory? Why did he deliberately withhold this information from the meeting? Secondly - at the meeting with Cllr Thompson to which he refers, I TOLD HIM that only £30 million had been spent and I TOLD HIM that this would have been agreed with Thames Water by the Chief Officer environmental services and no doubt signed off by the then Tory Lead Member, Cllr Barbara Reid. I TOLD HIM that because of this blunder by his party, the program had failed and residents were still suffering. It is probably appropriate to explain why this meeting took place in April. The meeting took place very simply because, after the despicable behaviour and correspondence from Tory Cllr Adrian Lee, our Group Chairman, Dr Whittall ( who is an ex Richmond Cllr and Deputy Mayor) felt compelled to write to Cllr Lee and rebuke him for his inappropriate behaviour and unacceptable correspondence with myself and our group , both privately and in the public domain. The Tory Leader then intervened and kindly invited me to meet with him, Cllr Lee and others at the Civic Centre to discuss these issues and move forward. Cllr Sheila O'Reilly who chaired the fiasco SDC meetings was also asked to attend. Surprise, surprise, Cllr Lee and Cllr O'Reilly didn't turn up. Nevertheless Cllr John Todd and Cllr Brad Fisher were there. I was surprised if not bemused to also see that PPC Mary Mcleod had delegated her election agent to attend. I genuinely believed that the meeting was constructive and we were able to air our differences and voice our expectations and I genuinely believed that these Cllrs would support residents in their efforts to improve the situation and hold Thames Water fully accountable. Oh how wrong was I? That these Tory Cllrs are now so determined to undermine residents, including their past coalition partners' efforts, and jump to Thames Water's every demand, is indeed beyond belief. Can anyone enlighten me as to why these people behave like this? From all accounts Labour's Ed Maine is now taking the lead on this and displaying sincere resident support. This is acknowledged and greatly appreciated. |