So, we have two meetings of the District Council on Thursday evening, in the Civic Suite in Rayleigh opposite Holy Trinity Church.
The first is a routine meeting of the development committee starting at 7:30. This will deal with three planning applications:
And then we move on to the second meeting, which will start after the development committee has finished. It will go into a private and confidential session, although you can expect some councillors to try to discuss some aspects in public.
It would be good to have some of the public present. The three planning applications should all spark some interesting debate, and if the second meeting stays in public session – even for a short while – it will be interesting as well. Also some councillors might be glad of some moral support!
? Don’t get it – 7:30 start for 3 applications , according to the other thread the “closed” meeting starts at 8pm, and you mention ‘ if it stays in public session ‘ , drink up at a brewery springs to mind….?
What a good idea. Come along if you can to watch democracy in action.
It would be interesting to know on what basis the 2nd meeting has been moved into private and confidential- if its a meeting of the Council or one of its committees it must by law state the reasons for this.
Ruth, welcome to onlineFOCUS! I can say a little bit more now the meeting is over. The meeting involved the ‘Land North of London Road site’. It was stated in open session by an officer that the most confidential part of the report was advice from legal counsel.
I actually agree that as this stage that has to be kept confidential, so that other parties such as Countryside don’t know what the advice is. But 90% of what I wanted to say could have been said in open session.
PLEASE ATTEND if you can tonight and ( like on 29/91/15 ) see how the Chairmen talks to the Public when he threatens to eject you if
you dare show support ( or otherwise ) for a speaker in the Chamber – we pay his wages and he is elected to serve us not dictate to us ,
Please come, it is an eye opener how bad things have become…..
From what I’ve read on the RAG website you certainly had company Chris, and not only that it liked you so much it didn’t want to leave! Shame on a Cllr [EDITED PENDING CONFIRMATION] for verbally abusing a member of the public who pays his expenses and the officers wages. he should know better and should make a full and public apology (guess I won’t hold my breath on that one though). Power to the people! RDC now know what the public think of trying to slip things through in secret.
So for those of you unable to attend –
From 7:30 > 9:00pm it was routine planning related applications / amendments etc;.
Next up was the secret meeting which required a vote confirming that the Press and Public were to be excluded – all the Conservative
majority Councillor’s voted for it , and to their credit all the opposition voted against it, the vote was won by the majority but the Public
refused to leave.
At this point the inept Chairperson called for a 20 minute recess and left the Chamber with all but one of the Conservative Councillor’s,
well over an hour went by without a return – it was left to Council Officers to return and explain that neither the Chairperson or Conservative Councillor’s would return with the Public present.
Having made their point the unified Public then left the building – no doubt leaving the Councillor’s with a very late night meeting an 11:00pm start……..no doubt Admin will update us tomorrow.