Ground Hog Day
Well, for a while, the Council Officers were genuinely interested in coming to an understanding with our community rather than trying to socially engineer the area. The FCA team had a very positive first meeting with the Chief Executive Ian Lowrie; Chief Legal Officer Jeremy Cook; Peter Latham whose close and long involvement with all aspects of the Dome is well known; Nathalie Brahma-Pearl serene in her superiority, plus two councillors sent as observers, We all agreed to hold a series of meetings, split into two strands. The first to explore how we could work together develop the Dome site for the good of the community, the second to put on the table all the issues that had poisoned relations between the Community Association and the Local Authority over the years, and to try to learn the lessons so that future projects could be managed better..
The second meeting was more difficult to arrange, and the atmosphere had already changed. However, the officers conceded that the £144,000 fire insurance money could be used to reinstate the community centre, the £25,000 set aside could be used for demolishing the geodesic Dome, there was an unknown amount of interest, but th but we were told that a properly costed scheme would have to drawn up and submitted to the Cabinet for approval. We asked for the financial information that would enable us to produce an accurate budget. It was agreed that we would make a proper presentation, you know, slides bells and whistles.
Of course, there was no need to submit the scheme to the Cabinet - all we need under the terms of our lease is to have things in place for the work to be carried out. However, we decided to go along with it, if it made it any easier for them to swallow. At great personal expense, we engaged our Surveyor, The 3 Jays, to draw up plans and costings.
From this point, the smell of dead rodents became ever stronger. We were unable to get any figures to help us from the council we needed for the business plan, and we had zero response in our questions about the presentation facilities till the day before when it was way to late. In the spirit of our meetings, we tried to get the officers to come to Fishersgate to discuss possibilities and put forward ideas. Nothing, nada, no response, no cooperation. We saw on the Adur website that our proposal was listed for the Cabinet at the end of January. No one told us. We made our own assumptions about the figures Adur wouldn’t give us and we submitted the proposal that you can read on this site.
Oh no!, It was too late for January. James Appleton had to have time to put it all into a report to circulate to the Members, Uncle Tom Cobbley and his extended family. So, re-listed for the end of February. And when they come, his report and recommendation, torturing the evidence to meet his conclusions, it is quite clear what has been going on.
The Officers’ report plus our replies will be posted on this site under the Documents heading. Happy reading.
