The following e-mail, dated 14 February 2014, has been sent to Overview and Scrutiny Committee Chair, Tim Wood, by Peter Whitfield of Save our Sidmouth. It is published here with Mr Whitfield’s permission:

Councillor,

As chairman of the Overview and Scrutiny Committee you will be aware of the dismissive attitude of some senior council members towards the strongly expressed motions passed at the 30 January OSC meeting in relation to the relocation project.

We are told that the next full council meeting on Wednesday week will consider the Cabinet’s motion to relocate to Skypark, although the agenda has not yet been published. We do not therefore know whether your motions will appear on that agenda or, if they do, whether they will be put ahead of the Cabinet recommendation.

As it is apparently standard procedure for your minutes to be passed by Cabinet before becoming valid and it will not be meeting again before 26th Feb it seems possible that that may be used as an excuse for excluding your motions.

If that should happen can I ask that you consider calling an emergency meeting of your committee to call in the Cabinet’s decision as your published remit allows and thus prevent a premature decision being pushed through by the leadership in the face of much public bemusement by the Skypark location, and the lack of any published evidence as to why it was the best option as the decision was taken in a Part B session.

You are the public’s primary bulwark against ill advised or otherwise dubious decisions made by other arms of the council and we ask that you stand up for us on this issue.

Thank you

Peter Whitfield
Sidmouth