Angered by way meeting was handled (From Bromsgrove Advertiser)

Angered by way meeting was handled

7:50am Saturday 30th January 2010

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I spoke in support of the petition to save the market hall at the overview and scrutiny committee meeting in the Bromsgrove Council chamber on January 19.

The meeting started with the chairman of the committee stating the procedure to be followed and who was allowed to speak. Members of the Labour group challenged the chairman’s decision not to let them speak in favour of the petition, but were allowed to answer questions on it.

A member of the public asked the chairman why these restrictions were placed on the debate when no such restrictions were placed on the previous item. Following these exchanges the leader of the council, Councillor Roger Hollingworth, stood up, shook his head and walked out. This set the tone of the whole meeting. The chairman proceeded to rubbish the petition by announcing that there was one person out of 1,200 who signed it fraudulently.

Following my presentation to the committee an officer of the council spoke in opposition to the petition, which did not answer any of the points I raised, but consisted of statistics from 100 questionnaires which the council handed out to the public in the street of which they had 45 replies, but it did not include the question should the market hall be demolished. They all concerned the street market and people’s perception of it.

The sound system in the council chamber is very poor and the people in the gallery could not hear the debate and asked if the councillors could speak up. The chairman made no response to this request other than to inform the public that the business of the committee would be suspended if the heckling continued.

A councillor who could not be heard got the public so frustrated that it produced a wave of requests from the gallery to speak up. The councillor took exception to this and immediately put forward a motion to take no further action on the petition, which was seconded and voted on by the ‘clones’ stifling any further discussions.

Alan Mitchell, The Flats

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