I am moved to write a letter....

I'm sure you'll be absolutely fine on your own, but if you do get stuck for any suitable faux polite, but in fact utterly disparaging phrases we're all here to help...😉

...well, I can certainly imagine me saying that to you......but it wasn't to anyone at National Grid  

Did you have a particular reason to attend, something happening you wish to influence or change?  Because if you do belittling and making an enemy of the parish clerk is not the way to do it.   

...'twas an eMail (It was appropriate to put it in "writing", though would have quite happily have been delivered f-to-f). It somehow 'did the rounds' after I had sent it, and from me it went only to the intended recipient and my Board Director!.

It was a clear Director turf-war, and my boss, nice though he was, wasn't going to openly fight the battle (read wimp).

I was prepared to either win (and stay) or lose (and go) - it gets to that point sometimes.

As it was, job description and organisational responsibilities (and as it happened in this case, capability) were clearly on my side, so I picked the battleground.



 
 

...well that went well........

For background this is not a small Parish Council; it represents more than 5,000 people. The planning application under consideration is major, and has the potential for significant impact on the village. The PC has run no public consultation of any kind to inform its response. There is another, possibly more impacting, one coming down the line.

==

I received an acknowledgement from the Parish Clerk saying the issues had been passed to the Chair of the Council for response.

It also contained an acknowledgement that the small (of a much greater) number of issues I'd raised in the public session (as an illustration of how they hadn't taken into account residents issues) had been added to the Council's response. Now that is interesting, since one of the issues I have is that the public session in all the Parish Council meetings is held at the end of the meeting, once business is finished, but before the meeting closes. This totally against recommended best practice of holding it to the start of business, such that public input can be considered during the main agenda items, and entirely out of alignment with every other PC under our District Council, who adopt that best practice. Accordingly, the PC's response had already been formulated, voted on, minuted and closed before I had my say, but was amended (by someone) outside the meeting and presumably not under proper scrutiny to include the few comments I was able to put forward. Rather questionable process, I think.

As an example of the ineptness, one of these comments was concern about the major impact of the development on parking in the village (think hundreds of cars; not a big issue for me, I walk, but a real issue for many). When I raised it, the Chair responded (rudely and abruptly) "We all know there are going to be parking problems" to much nodding from the councillors. This politely elicited the reply "then wouldn't it have been a good idea to include such concerns in the Parish Council's response?". Stunned silence followed.

===

I eventually also got a response from the Chair of the Parish Council (who doesn't Chair the Planning Committee, and wasn't there!) addressing in detail a large number of points, none of which featured in the least in my email, whilst totally ignoring the main two of rudeness and systemic total lack of proactive engagement with the Parish.

I don't do such evasion, so a follow-up went back (you can imagine how much more studiedly polite this one was!).

I now have a blunt response saying "I can't comment on the meeting as I wasn't there" (No apology just in case, no offer to follow-up, etc.). It really isn't difficult to craft a political response that is much more user friendly, even if you intend to do Sweet FA about it). This response also covered the lack of engagement with the Public with the one liner - "We held the meeting in the evening so people could attend, and only 6 did".

Well, yes, but both of these items are where I came in. Rudeness and inaction from officials, and lack of engagement with the public, and debarring any opportunity (except against process for forceful individuals such as myself) to put any actionable feedback into meetings.

(as a contrast, the applicant ran a number of open public feedback sessions during the run up to the application which were  well attended (100's) since they approached the public, publicised the events, and were at least reasonably proactive in their approach. 

The PC's final response was amateurish to say the least, both in content and presentation, the latter gobsmackingly so. Every point they raised (some of which were, believe me, entirely irrelevant were dismissed by the architects within half a day's turnround). My points, interestingly, were not dismissed - one almost got a convincing and positive response.

Everyone I've talked to has said I'm wasting my time - it simply isn't productive to engage with the PC - but of course, it shouldn't be, things would be much better if it wasn't, and that's where I started.

I'm now going for a F-to-F with the Parish Chair - hey, it keeps me off the streets!

===

(I went for a walk with an ex-works colleague yesterday; We swapped stories on this from me, and the sheer unworkableness of Sheffield City Council from him. Good job there weren't to many people around to overhear!    ) TBH, I'm not sure that his experience wasn't worse.