Letter: Perhaps Councillor Spooner Should Apologise?

Published on: 12 Sep, 2017
Updated on: 12 Sep, 2017

Cllr David Reeve (GGG) and complainants Cllrs Paul Spooner (Con) and Caroline Reeves (Lib Dem).

From Susan Parker

Leader of the Guildford Greenbelt Group

The result of the hearing that considered the complaints against my party colleague Cllr David Reeve was absolutely unbelievable.

It brings the council itself into disrepute. There is no sense of proportion. It has been an ludicrous process. It is also an obscene waste of public time and money.

My understanding is that as a matter of common law, public interest overrides any ordinary duty of confidentiality.  I believe common law does not require consultation with a monitoring officer (which is Guildford’s attempt to fetter councillors).

The housing number has been a matter of fundamental public interest in Guildford for the last five years.  Among other expressions of public interest, Guildford’s housing numbers led to the formation of Guildford Greenbelt Group, first as a pressure group then a political party.

By popular vote we now have three GGG councillors.  GBC’s lawyer said that there is no public interest in the housing number. This is ridiculous. It shows a fundamental ignorance of the facts.

David’s model highlighted deep flaws in the housing number. David wrote and drafted this model himself, using skills he honed through his professional life. It considered Guildford’s SHMA (Strategic Housing Market Assessment).

The SHMA is the fundamental underpinning for GBC’s Local Plan.  Guildford bases its housing requirement on that assessment. (Note “requirement” and “assessment” are defined legal terms which the planning inspectorate treats as different, although GBC blurs that distinction.)

The proposed requirement represents an increase of more than 20% in housing right across the borough’s countryside. This is of huge public concern. If the number that GBC are using to justify development is wrong, should the public not be told?

Almost all of the information used in David’s professional, scholarly work was already in the public domain, a fact ignored by the committee.  The only item not already in the public domain was one tiny statistic.

This was a prediction, which I understand was made in 2013 by Experian, of the probable level of economic growth over the next few years. This is just someone else’s assumption, which David replicated in order to give consistency to his model.

Since the disputed item is itself only an old prediction – it is not itself a fact – it’s questionable whether any duty of confidentiality can apply. Can you breach confidentiality over an old forecast?

However, even if it did apply, David has given an illustration of the significance of that component.  He suggested we regard that statistic as one brick. If all the other facts included were treated as a tower of bricks, the tower would be twice the height of the Shard.

David’s integrity is absolutely unquestionable.  He is scrupulously polite and treats everyone he deals with, with the utmost respect.

In the conclusions reached by the committee, David has been asked formally to apologise to a member of staff (using a statistic was considered disrespectful), which he has agreed to do.

Cllr Spooner’s emails, read out in public today, were discourteous. Perhaps Cllr Spooner should apologise?

Share This Post