CNJ COMMENT - It’s dangerous to make a mockery of consultation

Published: 7 July, 2011

IT is a curious paradox that many councillors, on the one hand, can spend time righting the plight of wronged constituents, but, on the other, cannot see what is morally wrong or the judicial pitfalls of the sort of fake consultations far too often carried out by the council, the government and other local authorities.

Such consultations push people into a quiet frenzy of frustrated impotence and a rejection of a political system that sails under the name of democracy – a dangerous mix that invites the intervention by populist extreme right-wing parties.

Enquiries by this newspaper show that although the council pledged to residents earlier in the year that they would be consulted before sites were sold off, this has hardly happened.

An extreme example of a fake consultation affects the proposed redevelopment of Carol Street workshops in Camden Town.

The council announced they would prefer to demolish the work units and community centre and sell off the site.

This is a prestigious site – large enough for a sizeable block of 15 or 10 flats, if not more, overlooking a small park in the centre of Camden Town.

Developers would queue up to buy it. Flats in such a block would bring in anything up to £10million to a developer.

But what about the small companies who occupy the council-owned workshops?

Unbelievably, a number of them had never been sent a special letter on the consultation – and if it had not been for the civic mindedness of a local shopkeeper who delivered the letter to the workshop leaseholders they would not have known of a meeting with a local councillor eventually held last week.

To muddy matters, the council appeared to have overlooked the fact that they had recently signed long rental leases with some of the business people – even though the consultation was centred on the possible demolition of their workshops.

A tangled story that could raise howls of laughter if it were a TV sit-com. 

But it isn’t.

Unfortunately, the council continues to take risks with poor or fake consultations. They got their fingers burnt in the 1990s when Primrose Hill residents won a judicial review case in the High Court.

But still they soldier on.  Officials may not be sensitive to the three-way relationship in local government – officials, councillors and the residents at the heart of it. But isn’t it time that our elected councillors understood what is at stake?