UPDATE ON YOUR MONEY

When the chair of Church Lench Parish Council told residents in an unprecendented 'annual report' that the Windfarm Working Party had secured funds from the neighbouring parish councils to pay for 'legal representation', he wasn't telling the full story.

The Working Party has solicited £750 from each of the neighbouring parish councils, with Church Lench PC acting as the 'lead' council. Six councils contributing £750 each out of their precepts equals a fighting fund of £4,500.

Between £2,500 and £3,000 of that money has been earmarked by Church Lench PC for 'legal representation costs' specifically towards the Environmental Impact Statement, a document based on numerous surveys which will be submitted by ScottishPower Renewables along with the planning application.

Quite what legal costs Church Lench and the neighbouring parish councils expect to incur with regard to this document are unclear. But more of that anon.

The rest of the Working Party's funding is designated for 'Contracting of noise measuring equipment', the approximate cost of which is £2,500.

With just £4,500 of public money to play with, Church Lench PC would not be able to afford to do both. Fortunately, though, £1,000 of the costs of the noise measuring equipment is to be 'donated by other parties'.

What other parties?

Who else would be interested in contributing £1,000 towards the costs of a superfluous background noise level survey?

Not VVASP. No, surely not!

But I think we need to be told who these 'other parties' are. Who is joining forces with the Windfarm Working Party, an initiative of the rabidly anti-windfarm Church Lench parish councillors, to pay for a background noise survey in the hope that it'll produce a slightly different result from that measured by ScottishPower Renewables?

If - I repeat, if - the balance is coming from VVASP, then it's obvious, isn't it? Church Lench PC, under the guise of its Windfarm Working Party, is actively looking for ways of opposing the windfarm planning application before that application has even been submitted. Rather than approaching the planning application in the unbiased, impartial manner required of parish councils, Church Lench has already made up its mind.

Hence, surely, the need for 'legal representation' regarding the Environmental Impact Statement. Again, Church Lench are using YOUR money in order to find fault with the EIS, or maybe to present their own version of the EIS using the data they've cobbled together, again using YOUR money, via their half-baked noise monitoring survey.

For some reason, the chair of Church Lench PC didn't feel that the local residents needed to know this. It's council tax-payers' money that is being misused here on a political campaign, but you don't need to know about that.

By demonstrating a gross inability to approach this issue impartially, Church Lench PC is running a very real risk of having its objections (which YOU paid for) disallowed by Wychavon District Council's planning committee. And by dragging the other parish councils into its biased and underhand way of doing things, Church Lench is also imperilling any objections they may wish to make to the proposals.

All this smacks of a concerted campaign to supplement VVASP's funds with public money by a parish council which is composed entirely of opponents to the windfarm. Which means, essentially, that tax-payers are funding VVASP.

Even if, like many others in the area, you support the Lenchwick Windfarm, you're paying for a bunch of ignorant nimbies to fight it on the flimsiest of grounds.

Unless Church Lench PC or its 'Windfarm Working Party' smokescreen are prepared to declare who these 'other parties' are who will be donating £1,000 to the pointless background noise monitoring survey, then we can only assume that Church Lench PC is in cahoots with VVASP and using tax payers' money to do VVASP's dirty work.

Let's hope that the District Council is keeping tabs on this travesty of local democracy.