Monday night’s Rayleigh Town Council meeting was disrupted by noisy interruptions from five or six residents of Bull Lane.
At agenda item 3 (Public Forum) they attempted to raise the subject of youth
nuisance in King Georges Field and the fact that Bye-Laws were not being
enforced. The meeting Chairman (Pat Weaver, Council Vice Chairman) ruled that as this was not an agenda item they couldn’t speak.This did not please them and there were loud mutterings of discontent.
The next item was a presentation by Chief Superintendent Walker about
neighbourhood policing and they used this opportunity to castigate both the
police and the council about the problems of late night disturbances in the
field and the lack of action in stopping this.However his attempts to
explain the police attitude (Including the oft repeated statement that
they’d prefer them to be in the field than elsewhere!) were drowned out by
noisy interruptions with all the residents attempting to talk (shout) at
once and rapidly developed into a rowdy shouting match with one resident
calling the town council “a useless load of rubbish”.
The Chairman finally adjourned the meeting until order could be restored and
the public were asked to leave ,which they eventually did.
The rest of the meeting went off fairly routinely. It was decided to form a sub committee(!) to review the council’s relations with the press and at this point Ron queriedwhat was the reason for the item on dress code at the last meeting being held in P&C. In the absence of the Council Chairman no one seemed to know
the answer and Ron decided to drop the issue. This very trivial
matter should be now forgotten!