PRESS RELEASE 26th March 2008

FLAT HOLDS ANOTHER PACKED MEETING

FLAT held another consultation event at the Marshland St James Jubilee hall last night (25th March).  As with previous events the hall was filled to capacity with about 200 concerned residents attending.

The speakers included John Welcher who gave an account of how Doddington Parish Council has been conned by developers, Sue Cooper who updated everyone on her wildlife survey, Councillor David Markinson who gave a very robust account of the issues associated with wind farms and finally Mike Barnard who gave an overview of how to win the fight against these inefficient monstrosities.

The talks were very well received with each speaker being given a loud, spontaneous round of applause.  A show of hands demonstrated universal opposition to the proposal with no-one being prepared to show it any support.

A number of questions from the audience demonstrated the fact that they felt cheated by developers who cancelled the Marshland St James consultation event (and didn’t even bother to hold one at Tilney).  There where demands for the event to be rescheduled and FLAT would again like to make a plea to the developers to fulfil their obligation to Marshland and Tilney by announcing new dates for the event.  There was also a strong feeling of resentment about the way this proposal had been handled and it would be fair to say that the developers, consortium and consultants are viewed by many people as being untrustworthy and are only involved in the project in order to make money (and lots of it).

It was encouraging to see a number of Borough and Parish Councillors present but it did not go unnoticed by the audience that there was not one person in attendance from the Marshland St James Parish Council, the developers or the land owners, a stunning dereliction of duty which leads many villagers to feel that they are being treated with total contempt!!  However parishioners of Marshland St James should be aware that the Parish Council is holding its open forum event on the 7th of April at 7PM at the Methodist Church.  Concerned parishioners may wish to attend and make their views known.

A key theme of all of the speeches was the need to be united, do your bit and keep lobbying everyone involved in the project especially the land owners, developers, consultants and the Borough Council.  Details of all concerned are on the FLAT website and can be viewed at www.flat-group.co.uk.  However, we at FLAT would again like to request that all lobbying is kept within the law and all letters, e-mails, phone calls etc should be firm but polite without resorting to abusive or threatening behaviour.

For those of you who have not already done so, please register your e-mail on our website (www.flat-group.co.uk)  and we will then be able to keep you informed via regular updates.