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Letter: Isn’t Cllr Spooner Now Pre-determined On the North Street Application?
Published on: 9 Jan, 2023
Updated on: 9 Jan, 2023
Aerial view of the North Street Regeneration site
From David Roberts
In response to: Is the North Street Design What Voters Really Wanted?
May I take it Cllr Paul Spooner will, on the clear grounds of pre-determination, promptly recuse himself from the planning committee’s decision on this application?
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Responses to Letter: Isn’t Cllr Spooner Now Pre-determined On the North Street Application?
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John Redpath
January 9, 2023 at 2:11 pm
Having said he will never correspond with The Dragon NEWS again, at least so I’ve been told, Cllr Spooner now seems to have shot himself in the foot.
1. The North Street proposal is as per Policy A5 of the Local Plan his administration brought in. This proposed up to 400 homes, as per this application, and put no restriction on height!
2. He has shown he is pre-determined against the application and so can no longer take part in the planning committee process – or was this deliberate so that he could duck out and not have to vote in a design that meets the policy his party passed just before the elections in 2019?
3. He’s corresponded with The Dragon. Well done to its editor for rising above previous insults. I smell an election coming up.
I assume that when applications come in for the green belt sites damned by the same Local Plan he will also claim that his party would never have built 6,000+ homes in our precious green belt.
John Redpath is a R4GV borough councillor for Holy Trinity.
Paul Spooner
January 9, 2023 at 3:01 pm
I will not be at Planning Committee on Wednesday as I am travelling on business this week. My substitute is Cllr Graham Eyre. Hence I am no longer constrained and able to comment.
Paul Spooner is a Conservative borough councillor for South Ash & Tongham.
Wayne Smith
January 14, 2023 at 7:49 pm
So having attempted to muddy the waters at the last minute with his failed request for the vote to go to full council, then showing a pre-determined view and then absenting himself from the Planning Committee meeting due to business, Cllr Spooner’s substitute then also failed to attend the planning meeting.
Not just any Planning meeting, one that involved probably the most significant development in Guildford town centre for the last forty years.