This a brief report on the West of England Combined Authority (WECA) meeting held in Bath on Friday 28th January 2022 to consider South Gloucestershire Outline Business Case for Funding of Thornbury High Street
As many of you will have already gathered, we had the opportunity to read out Statements from TTaDRA, Gil, John, Malcolm & myself
Toby Savage then read a prepared statement saying that he was brought up in Thornbury, his parents had had a shop, the High Street had been in decline for10 years, they had held 2 consultations – totally insincere and without shame
The other 3 council leaders/mayor look totally uninterested and then nodded the motion through without any comment 4 for and zero against
The WECA Chief Executive now has power to sign off the FULL Business Case in due course, apparently without any need for discussion with the public or further show of hands by the councils
Possibly a stitch up agreed before the meeting but also likely that each council is only interested in getting their share from the WECA money tree and will not rock the boat for any reason – least of all Democracy
Every other application/agreement of funding also went through without comment as well
The Statements from the Community were not distributed until 6.00pm on Thursday
Obviously, the council leaders had not even read them and probably were barely aware of them
Dan Norris subsequently said that he went to the Public Meetings last year with an open mind and that they had the strongest feeling of any public meeting that he had ever been to
He offered to come to another such meeting if we held one
Dan is certainly the only politician of any flavour in South Glos or the Town Council that has come out of this well
We have a committee meeting to discuss ways forward at 7.00pm on Wednesday 2nd February 2022 (Turnberries)
So please come to this meeting if you have anything you feel that you can offer
We need to refocus, agree our immediate aims, and establish how we get there
This is link to youtube where the proceedings were televised
You will find it very interesting! https://youtu.be/hQvTqcdH5D8?t=5889
Not exactly Democracy in action
We hope to post further news items in the next few days