Key Council Plan gets only Luke-Warm Support

A key council strategy document, outlining the future vision and direction for a Sustainable Community in Epsom & Ewell failed to gain the support of no less than 15 members of the Borough Council at a meeting on 28th April.

Due to its leading role in the Local Strategic Partnership (LSP), the council is required by central government to produce this local strategy. However, even the ruling Residents' Party admitted that the document had been written by consultants and not the council itself, was at a very early stage and needed further development. A council report then went on to say that the strategy would be a key planning document for the future. Some 15 councillors voted against endorsing the document in its current form, but the document was approved by a small majority.

Cllr Anna Jones (Lib Dem, College) said that the local strategy document had not received any input from the majority of councillors and did not therefore reflect either the views of the council as a whole, its councillors or local residents. She said "it was a quite absurd decision to endorse such a poor strategy, apparently steamrollered through simply to be able to say it had been done and meet a government target. It didn't seem to matter that most people didn't agree with the content. Only two Residents' Association councillors were involved in its preparation but apparently it's destined to become a key planning tool! I wasn't allowed to be actively involved in Partnership meetings and neither were any of my colleagues. The blatant disregard for local views and those of Epsom-based councillors - who are elected to serve the residents and business community of Epsom - was what we have come to expect from the dictatorial style of the ruling RA group, most of whom live in Ewell."

Background : The borough is charged with preparing a Sustainable Community Strategy which must be approved by the Local Strategic Partnership, an organisation constituted by central government diktat. The LSP membership is ideally drawn from the local authority and local businesses plus a cross-section of organisations operating in the public and private sector within the borough. The borough council is charged with acting as community leader on the LSP, but the "very early stage draft document" had apparently already been adopted by the LSP before the meeting on 28th April.